China Botanical Garden alliance to save endangered plants recently established

"If there is no wild rice, there will be no hybrid rice today; if there is no Thinopyrum elongatum, there will be no new wheat varieties of Xiaoyan series today!" Xu Zhihong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and President of the Chinese society of plant physiology, said recently at the founding conference of the China Botanical Garden alliance In his opinion, compared with animals, the importance of plants has not been widely recognized: "the botanical garden is not only the Noah's Ark for plant protection, but also an important place for science popularization." According to reports, there are more than 200 botanical gardens in China, but only 66% of the native plant species are preserved, only 34% of the rare and endangered plants are preserved, and there is a lack of balanced protection for different genetic diversity and different geographical provenances, and there is a lack of top-level design and division of labor cooperation mechanism for species preservation between botanical gardens Chen Jin, President of the China Botanical Garden alliance and director of the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said 48 botanical gardens have joined the alliance The alliance then launched a "full coverage protection plan for indigenous species" According to this plan, it is expected to increase the conservation proportion of indigenous species to 80%, rare and endangered species to 70% in the next five years, and effectively increase the backup conservation and genetic diversity conservation of species The alliance will select 25 to 30 key botanical gardens to implement the project.