As a representative of an arboretum, botanical garden, or other living collection specializing in plants, we are writing to inquire if you, or another representative from your institution, would have an interest in participating in a satellite meeting during the XIX International Botanical Congress, entitled Garden Genomics Tissue Banking Workshop, hosted by the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens on Saturday 29 July 2017 from 10:00–14:00 at Fairy Lake Botanical Garden in Shenzhen, China.

The Global Genome Initiative for Gardens (GGI-Gardens) represents an international partnership of institutions that seek to improve the visibility and the research value of living collections for genomic research. As a part of the Global Genome Initiative, GGI-Gardens seeks to Preserve and Understand Earth’s Genomic Biodiversity on the plant Tree of Life. Together with recognized herbaria, biorespositories, and botanic gardens, we are organizing an international effort to sample and preserve tissue vouchers from all species of plants on Earth. 

Primary goals of GGI-Gardens include:

• Partnering with international institutions with diverse and unique living collections of plants to sample and preserve at least 50% of the known genera of plants on Earth;

• Educate and train staff at arboreta and botanic gardens by providing best practices, pipelines, webinars, and workshops for sampling genomic tissue vouchers;

• Develop data quality standards for plant genomic tissue sampling;

• Facilitate tissue sampling and preservation at arboreta and botanic gardens; and

• Develop resources to sequence and make discoverable barcode sequences for all families and genera of plants.