People

Giles, Sarah

Job Title Seed Conservation Assistant
Department Seed Conservation
Section Curation
Science Teams Millennium Seed Bank Project
Joined Kew 2003
Foreign Language(s)

Qualifications & Appointments

BSc (Hons), Biological Science, Univ. Brighton, 2001.

Role

Seed cleaning, x-raying, banking, germination testing, accessioning & harvesting of regeneration material.

Initial receipt and assessment of incoming USA collections, followed by the cleaning, x-raying, counting, banking and germination testing of the received collections. Cleaning undertaken by volunteers is organised and supervised. If necessary, regeneration and harvesting of relevant collections is performed. The associated field data are also checked and accessioned on to the MSB and seed cleaning databases, from which monthly statistics are extracted. In addition research into dormancy issues in the families Caryophyllaceae and Boraginaceae are investigated.

Projects

Seeds of Success USA: Native Plant Materials for Conservation and Restoration

Solving Seed Germination Problems in Conservation Collections