This Academic Research Facilities Modernization Program (ARFMP) award from the Research Facilities Office provides funds to Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens for the replacement of a seed storage facility and greenhouses and for the repair and renovation of laboratories which house systematic and evolutionary botanical research and research training activities. These buildings were constructed, respectively, in pre-1950, 1960, and 1969 and none of them has been renovated to date. The ARFMP grant of $400,000 and $400,000 provided by the grantee as cost sharing will be used to modernize these research and research training facilities which will permit current research and research training programs to expand in scope and duration and to encompass an array of experimental procedures that it is currently infeasible to use. This project will address the need to improve the current research infrastructure both in terms of health and safety and of the quantity, quality, and diversity of research that can be conducted by providing space for research and research training which is adequately heated, cooled, and ventilated and which conforms to current building codes. This award contributes to the infrastructure of science by providing an improved environment for the conduct of systematic and evolutionary botanical research and for the training of quality graduate students in a program that plays an important role in the research training of minority students, that excels in its integration of field, greenhouse, laboratory, and herbarium research techniques, and that fills an important need in its production of well- and broadly-trained plant systematists.
