About the DNA Bank

Background

Over its 196 years, Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden has been carrying out research in the most diverse fields of botany, with a wide range of indigenous plant species including many rare and/or endangered. Also, it has always been a goal of the Institution the establishment and the increase of its scientific collections, as the herbarium and the arboretum. Most recently, aiming species conservation, another collection has been created: The DNA Bank of Brazilian Flora Species.

Our Mission

Our Bank aims to preserve representative genetic information of the high diversity presented by Brazilian flora, being groundwork for plant conservation and biotechnology. The DNA Bank will be another Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden scientific collection that can be used in research by current and future generations.

Our goal over the next few years is to store DNA from Arboretum collections, from relevant species of endangered Brazilian ecosystems, specially the Atlantic Rain Forest, from special taxonomic groups, from existing herbarium sheets and also from different accesses of a rare and/or endangered species.