NSF-funded African plant biodiversity project brings international scholars to KU and Missouri Botanical Garden
Lawrence — The University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and the Missouri Botanical Garden welcomed four visiting African scholars from Aug. 5-22, 2026, as part of a National Science Foundation-funded effort to build one of the most comprehensive digital resources ever assembled for tropical African seed plants.
The visiting researchers included Alex Asase, director of the Centre for Plant Medicine Research in Ghana; Sandrine Uwase, collection manager of the National Herbarium of Rwanda; Pascal Sibomana, director and co-founder of the Rwanda Biodiversity Conservation Institute (RBCI); and Alexis Nsabimana, a master's candidate in Biodiversity Conservation and Natural Resources Management at the University of Rwanda and research assistant with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
The scholarly exchange was part of the training and capacity-building activities associated with an NSF collaborative project led by Town Peterson, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and senior curator of ornithology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum.
The project brings together 21 U.S. herbaria, biodiversity data specialists and African researchers to create an unprecedented network of digitized specimen records documenting the rich diversity of tropical African seed plants.
At KU, the researchers toured the R. L. McGregor Herbarium and met with collection managers from several divisions of the Biodiversity Institute. Discussions focused on collection management and biodiversity data workflows, including approaches to holistic vouchers, past georeferencing initiatives, digitization practices and two-dimensional imaging of collection materials such as field notes.
The visitors also met with project leaders and biodiversity informatics specialists to gain deeper insights into data quality, ecological data integration and cyberinfrastructure supporting modern biodiversity science.
Following their time in Lawrence, the scholars participated in additional training activities at the Missouri Botanical Garden, home to the largest collection of African plant specimens in the United States. There, they received hands-on instruction in numerous aspects of herbarium operations, including specimen shipping and receiving, specimen processing, mounting, imaging and transcription.
The visitors also met with Missouri Botanical Garden experts in medicinal botany, an area of particular relevance to ongoing efforts to document and understand Africa's rich plant diversity and traditional knowledge systems.
The exchange reflects the project's commitment not only to digitizing millions of biodiversity records but also to strengthening international collaborations and building long-term research capacity among institutions in Africa and the United States. By connecting networked herbaria with African researchers actively engaged in georeferencing and data mobilization, the project is helping create a more complete and accessible picture of tropical African plant diversity.
The collaborative effort is supported by the National Science Foundation through awards DBI-2223875 (University of Kansas), DBI-2223878 (KU Symbiota Support Hub) and DBI-2223879 (Missouri Botanical Garden).