MRI: MRI: Acquisition of a X-ray Machine at Chicago Botanic Garden

An award is made to the Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG) to purchase a cabinet x-ray machine to support research on seed biology and ecology for applications in ecosystem conservation and restoration. The x-ray machine is critically important for expanding the scope and impact of direct conservation activities, which provide diverse and broad benefits to society.

Such activities include seed banking of globally imperiled plant taxa and plants of the tallgrass prairie as well as conserving and restoring native plant populations and their habitats. Improved curation of CBG’s over 11,000 seed collections banked for long-term conservation benefits Center for Plant Conservation and Seeds of Success, the national native plant seed banking programs for rare plants and restoration-relevant plants respectively.

The new x-ray machine will also enhance CBG’s educational mission. Learning about and using the machine will improve the quality of research training for conservation professionals, graduate students, and participants in our Science Career Continuum (SCC) program, which engages middle school, high school, and undergraduate students (including REU participants) in scientific research focusing on groups historically excluded in science.

Graduate students in the Plant Biology and Conservation Program offered by CBG and Northwestern University will use it for research, as will faculty and visiting scientists from local, regional, and national conservation institutions, governmental agencies, and other research institutions. Importantly, the new x-ray equipment will fill a national infrastructure need.

The facility builds much-needed capacity in Chicago and the upper Midwest to conduct basic and applied seed-related research and to conserve and restore native plants and their habitats.

The x-ray machine will enable CBG to increase its capabilities to advance knowledge in ecology, evolution, conservation biology, restoration ecology, pollination biology, and in conservation methods and practice. CBG studies encompass the biology of small, fragmented plant populations; demography of both rare and threatened native plants, and invasive plant species; plant and pollinator responses to environmental changes; functional traits of seeds; invasive potential of ornamental plants; genetics of seed transfer zones; and more.

CBG scientists will use the x-ray machine to assess embryo formation in seeds, test seed viability, better model plant demography with improved measures of plant fitness, and observe fat reserves in bees, among other uses. X-ray imagery is both rapid and non-destructive and allows one to conduct research that would be impossible without it – for example, measuring seed embryo characteristics and then linking them to germination of individual seeds.

Lastly the x-ray facility will facilitate studies on improving seed banking methodology, benefiting society at large.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.