Doctoral Dissertation Research: Moving, Making, and Saving: The Science of Seed Banking

博士论文研究：移动、制作和保存：种子库的科学

• 批准号: 1557207
• 负责人: Mario Biagioli
• 金额: $ 1.51万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-01 至 2017-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1557207&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Moving; Making

General Audience Summary This dissertation project uses a combination of archival and ethnographic research to examine the entangled processes of moving, making and saving plants at the Millennium Seed Bank of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The project asks how seed banking practices in a post-colonial era differ from movement of botanical specimens during earlier eras of science and governance. It will study the changes in laboratory and visualization techniques, through ten months of archival and ethnographic fieldwork in England and the United States. It will use theories from the fields of STS, environmental humanities, and visual culture, to contribute new concepts concerning agricultural innovation, food security, biodiversity preservation, and to challenge the frontiers on basic genetic science. The results of this research will be published in scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, and as part of a book project with an academic press; in addition, they will be disseminated to specific target communities via workshops and seminars. The results of this study will also be used to develop undergraduate curriculum that will bridge gaps between the humanities, the social sciences, and the biological sciences. In addition, new primary material such as the high resolution scans of plant patent drawings will be made available to scholars and the public via the web. Technical Summary The primary site of this project is Kew Garden's Millennium Seed Bank, the largest repository of cryogenically preserved plant genetics resources in the world. This project will bring to light how seed science is made at seed banks with the aim of adding value to the process and showing how it can be done better. It will do so by giving acute attention to the Seed Bank's relationship to the historical movement of plant bodies, debates around biodiversity, intellectual property, and agricultural applications. It will also examine various types of collaboration across many scales of activity, among different professions, disciplines, and scientific specialties that make seeds such widely shared objects of knowledge capable of transcending boundaries of major departments of formal scientific inquiry. The results of this project will contribute pertinent insights for important policy decisions about the fates of biodiversity, food security, and agribusiness, which all depend on the science of seeds. They will also serve in addressing pivotal questions being posed by scholars of agricultural and plant history, twentieth century US agricultural policy, intellectual property of biological materials, advocacy over rights to seeds, and visual culture.

一般观众摘要本论文项目使用档案和人种学研究相结合，研究在基尤的皇家植物园的千年种子银行移动，制作和保存植物的纠缠过程。该项目探讨了后殖民时代的种子银行做法与早期科学和治理时代的植物标本运动有何不同。它将研究在实验室和可视化技术的变化，通过十个月的档案和人种学实地考察在英国和美国。它将使用STS，环境人文学和视觉文化领域的理论，提出有关农业创新，食品安全，生物多样性保护的新概念，并挑战基础遗传科学的前沿。这项研究的结果将发表在同行评审期刊的学术文章中，并作为与学术出版社合作的图书项目的一部分;此外，还将通过讲习班和研讨会向特定目标社区传播。这项研究的结果也将用于开发本科课程，将弥合人文，社会科学和生物科学之间的差距。此外，新的原始材料，如植物专利图纸的高分辨率扫描将通过网络提供给学者和公众。该项目的主要地点是基尤园的千年种子库，这是世界上最大的低温保存植物遗传资源库。该项目将揭示种子科学是如何在种子库中进行的，目的是增加这一过程的价值，并展示如何做得更好。它将通过密切关注种子银行与植物体历史运动的关系，围绕生物多样性，知识产权和农业应用的辩论来做到这一点。它还将研究各种类型的合作，跨越许多规模的活动，在不同的专业，学科和科学专业，使种子这样广泛共享的知识对象能够超越正式的科学研究的主要部门的边界。该项目的结果将为有关生物多样性，粮食安全和农业综合企业的命运的重要政策决策提供相关见解，这些都取决于种子科学。他们还将解决农业和植物历史，二十世纪美国农业政策，生物材料的知识产权，倡导种子权利和视觉文化的学者提出的关键问题。