[Science News] – Meise Botanic Garden publishes its Science Strategy 2026–2035

Thu 23 Apr

Meise Botanic Garden has just published its Science Strategy 2026–2035. This Strategy works in conjunction with the Science Collections, Living Collections, and Public Outreach Strategies – soon to be published – to achieve the overarching mission of Meise Botanic Garden: “Building a sustainable future through discovery, research, and conservation of plants.”

Plants, fungi, and algae are vital components of ecosystems, providing essential goods and services that sustain life. However, plant diversity is under growing threat due to habitat loss from changing land use, overexploitation, pollution, the spread of invasive species, and climate change. These alarming changes in biodiversity and ecosystem health present significant societal challenges. Meise Botanic Garden’s Science Strategy 2026-2035 outlines our commitment to addressing these challenges through innovative scientific research leveraging our invaluable collections and by raising public awareness about the critical importance of plant diversity.

To address the societal challenges of the 21st century and demonstrate how our scientific research contributes to overcoming them, we have defined ten research ambitions for the period 2026–2035. The first five ambitions focus on what we will investigate and they are each aligned with a specific societal challenge.

Safeguarding the Belgian flora: maintaining our leading role as an expertise centre for the documentation and conservation of the Belgian flora.
Contributing to global conservation challenges: monitoring and conserving threatened species and vulnerable ecosystems globally, and in tropical Africa and Europe in particular.
Taking on global change challenges for plant diversity: contributing to addressing global environmental challenges by documenting and studying the factors most prominently threatening plant diversity.
Understanding and recording biodiversity: expanding our leadership in taxonomic research, to ensure that the foundational knowledge of biodiversity continues to underpin global conservation and sustainable development efforts.
Contributing to food and health security through conserving crop genetic resources: Applying our expertise in conservation and valorisation of crops such as coffee, bananas, beans and edible mushrooms and of Belgian crop genetic resources.

Within each research ambition, we have identified different priorities and set clear goals to be achieved over the next decade. Complementing these thematic ambitions are five overarching ambitions that outline how we will conduct our research, emphasising our commitment to fostering a dynamic scientific ecosystem.

Focusing on (inter)national collaboration and capacity building: consolidating Meise Botanic Garden as a leading European institute for innovative research on plants, fungi, and algae through collaboration and training.
Doing science in state-of-the-art research infrastructure: undertaking an ambitious renovation of our collection- and research building, transforming it into a state-of-the-art research campus.
Providing expert services: expanding our expert services while looking for new market opportunities and optimising customer satisfaction.
Embracing open science and open data: making our findings widely available to researchers, policymakers, and the public by embracing open access platforms, using interoperable data repositories, and engaging in global partnerships.
Bringing science to the public: engaging the public in understanding plant diversity via public oriented events, publishing scientific papers and developing online platforms.

These ambitions guide our work for 2026–2035 and reaffirm our commitment to protecting and understanding plant diversity.

Link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19311000