To draw on Taiwan’s academic expertise in botany and to expand the diversity of Taiwan’s development assistance work, since June 2012 the TaiwanICDF has worked in cooperation with the National Museum of Natural Science (NMMS) and the Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center on a project involving the census and classification of plant resources in the Solomon Islands, one of the TaiwanICDF’s partner countries in the South Pacific.

With project implementation having already made significant progress, the NMNS held a press conference at National Taiwan University Hospital’s International Convention Center on June 19 to announce the results of the census and classification work to date, as well as to publicize Taiwan’s implementation of the project, which is assisting the Solomon Islands in its pursuit of conservation and hopes to promote sustainable development through the appliance of plant sciences.

Working out of the Solomons’ nine provincial capitals and supported by personnel at Honiara Botanical Gardens, where the project is based locally, project staff have been performing a range of activities throughout the islands, including gathering plants, preparing specimens, collecting in vivo samples, drying materials and performing molecular studies or medicinal and chemical analyses.

In addition to comprising personnel from the TaiwanICDF, the NMNS and the Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center, the Taiwanese team of researchers has included other botanists from Taiwan’s academic community, including members of the Council of Agriculture’s Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, National Taiwan University, Tsinghua University, National Chiayi University and the Endemic Species Research Institute. From the beginning of the project last year until May 2013, the team had surveyed the three provinces of Guadalcanal, Western and Makira, to date identifying 2,522 species of plants.

Significantly, in October last year, Hsu Tian-chuan, a Ph.D. student at Tsinghua University working with the research team, discovered a new species of gastrodia, a genus of the orchid family, growing in the wild. The plant, which has yet to be verified as a distinct species, has been tentatively named Gastrodia solomonensis. With gastrodia not previously thought to be native to the Solomon Islands, the find not only represents an important development for the project itself, but also indicates how little plant resources have been studied throughout many areas of the country, highlighting the value of continuing the in-depth census.

To improve the value of partner countries’ biodiversity and promote the conservation of natural resources, as well as to assist in training professionals working in associated fields in pursuit of the sustainable development of projects in its partner countries, the TaiwanICDF also hosted a Workshop on Biodiversity and the Germplasm Conservation of Plant Resources from June 6 to 19. The workshop, which was attended by 22 participants from 19 countries, including a number of Solomon Islanders, focused on building awareness of biodiversity through an introduction to the subject and by introducing Taiwan’s own achievements in biodiversity and educational concepts in conservation and plant conservation.

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• Update: 2018/03/01
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