Our Research Priorities

• Unlocking Knowledge and Understanding of Plants and Fungi for the Benefit of Society

  Discovery Science: Understanding Plant and Fungal Diversity

  • Accelerating biodiversity discovery, characterisation and mapping, to support conservation planning and land-use choices
  • Technological innovation including large-scale use of genomic data for biodiversity characterisation and monitoring, and development of data-portals and workflows to support large-scale analyses of biodiversity data and trends

  Global Environmental Change: Understanding biodiversity and ecosystem change

  • Understanding, quantifying and predicting drivers of change leading to biodiversity loss, at scales ranging from individual species to major biomes
  • Developing and implementing rapid threat assessments to prioritise conservation actions and interventions to minimise biodiversity loss and extinction

  Conservation and Sustainability: Delivering science to enable the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity

  • Developing integrated strategies to support the conservation and sustainable utilisation of natural capital and the maintenance of ecosystem services
  • Developing and implementing restoration plans that lead to net gains for biodiversity and/or nature-based solutions to climate change

   

  Collections

  Conserving and Developing Botanical Collections as a Global Resource

  Collections Custodians: Curating and enriching the botanical collections held at RBGE, and supporting the wider global network of botanical collections 

  • Increasing the number and diversity of threatened plant species in ex situ conservation collections to protect against extinction
  • Collections digitisation to enable global access to collections and data, to support scientific and cultural research, and to underpin conservation planning
  • Curating and protecting the collections held at RBGE, and enhancing the environmental sustainability of our collections management practices

   

  People

  Enriching and Empowering Individuals and Communities through Learning and Engagement with Plants and Fungi

  Knowledge and skills sharing: Growing global capacity in biodiversity science, conservation and horticulture

  • Establishing a Biodiversity Skills Centre, mobilising and democratising knowledge to address national and international training needs in biodiversity science, horticulture, practical conservation and sustainability
  • Targeted programmes translating research into practice, working with scientists, communities and governments in Scotland and around the world to understand, conserve, restore and sustainably use biodiversity

   

  Read our Science and Biodiversity Strategy 2021-2030