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Expanding the role of botanical gardens in the future of food

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Consistent with their historical focus on the functional utility of plants, botanical gardens have an important opportunity to help ensure global food and ecosystem security by expanding their living collections, research and education programmes to emphasize agriculture and its impacts.

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Figure 1: The global network of botanical gardens.
Figure 2: Ranked abundance of taxa maintained by global botanic gardens and agricultural taxa utilized for human consumption.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, 63103, Missouri, USA

    A. J. Miller

  2. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    A. J. Miller, P. Raven & P. Wyse Jackson

  3. United States Botanic Garden, 20024, Washington DC, USA

    A. Novy

  4. Botany Department, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, 20560, Washington DC, USA

    A. Novy

  5. United States Agency for International Development, 20004, Washington DC, USA

    J. Glover

  6. Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, 63132, Missouri, USA

    E. A. Kellogg

  7. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, Beltsville, 20705, Maryland, USA

    J. E. Maul

  8. Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, 63130, Missouri, USA

    P. Wyse Jackson

Authors
  1. A. J. Miller
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  2. A. Novy
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  3. J. Glover
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  4. E. A. Kellogg
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  5. J. E. Maul
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  6. P. Raven
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  7. P. Wyse Jackson
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Correspondence to A. J. Miller or A. Novy.

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Miller, A., Novy, A., Glover, J. et al. Expanding the role of botanical gardens in the future of food. Nature Plants 1, 15078 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.78

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