A grant has been awarded to the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez under the direction of Dr. Jesus D. Chinea to upgrade collection facilities and develop a database for the plant collection of the University. The collection includes a large number of plants, fungi, and bryophytes (mosses, liverworts) from Puerto Rico, a region whose landscapes have changed dramatically in recent years. New cabinets will help alleviate crowding of the herbarium and protect the specimens in archival quality facilities. An existing database will also be upgraded to include images of plant specimens and provide data on geographical distributions. These improvements will make information identification and distribution of the flora of Puerto Rico available to a worldwide community of researchers and educators. To facilitate specimen accessibility and searching for information in the database, barcodes will be applied to 30,000 specimens of plants and wood. Dr. Chinea and colleagues will develop an educational program called PLANTA (Program to stimuLAte studeNts in plant TAxonomy) to recruit students to work on the project and explore prospective careers in Botany. Faculty mentors will train students to participate in various aspects of database and curatorial work.
