November 2024
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We are thrilled to announce that our next webinar with the International Society for Seed Science (ISSS) will be on 27 November, 2024, and registration is now open!
Our panellists will discuss Seed Supply and Storage with a Focus on Tropical Tree Species. Their topics are:
- Tools for the conservation of rainforest seeds by Karen Sommerville.
- Tropical tree seeds: supply, testing and solutions by Elisa Vieira.
Keep an eye out for further updates as we publish the abstracts from their presentations.
ISTA Secretary General Andreas Wais will moderate the webinar and everyone can participate for free.
More on the Panelists
Karen Sommerville is a Research Scientist at the Australian PlantBank, a premier conservation and research facility within the Botanic Gardens of Sydney. With a background in horticulture, Karen has been dedicated to plant conservation research since 2003 and is an active member of the ISTA Seed Storage Committee.
She currently leads the Rainforest Seed Conservation Project, which focuses on identifying Australian rainforest species suitable for seed banking, assessing their seed longevity, and advancing alternative storage methods, including tissue culture and cryopreservation techniques for species with challenging storage needs. Under Karen’s guidance, her team has collected extensive germination and seed trait data for over 400 plant species across diverse families, contributing vital insights to rainforest plant conservation. From these studies, they have developed an accessible key to help assess storage behavior, especially valuable for seeds that are limited in availability or challenging to germinate.
Elisa Vieira holds a degree in Agronomy from the Federal University of Lavras (1997), where she also completed her Master’s (2000) and Ph.D. (2004) in Agronomy with a specialisation in Phytotechnics, focusing on Seed Production and Technology. From 2004 to 2011, she served as a researcher at the Biotechnology Center of Coodetec (Central Research Cooperative), working with molecular markers on breeding, tissue culture and transformation of large crop plants.
Between 2009 and 2011, Elisa was a professor in the postgraduate program in Biotechnology Applied to Agriculture at Universidade Paranaense (UNIPAR), where she guided research in the use of molecular markers. Currently, she is a researcher at Embrapa Forests. Her work as a technical manager of the Forest Seeds Laboratory centers on germination, seed storage, and the selection of seed collection matrices, all informed by genetic studies and statistical methods applied to forest seed technology. She also serves as a co-advisor for graduate students in Plant Production and Forest Engineering at the Federal University of Paraná, contributing her expertise in forest seed technology.
In addition, Elisa is an active member and currently serves as the chair of the ISTA Forest Seed Committee.
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Topics
Species
