Award decisions for the IAPT Small Collections Grants

We are pleased to announce the awards for the new IAPT Small Collections Grant program. This program was initiated last year for the improvement and/or maintenance of collections (plants, fungi, algae) held by small herbaria worldwide. Collection improvements include projects involving digitization, processing a specimen backlog, shipping an endangered collection to another herbarium, or other similar tasks.

We received 107 applications from 41 countries! The majority of applications came from South America (44), followed by Eurasia (25), Asia (12), and 9 each from Africa and Central America, 7 from North America, and one from Australia. The grants committee was pleased to have received so many excellent proposals. It is great news that there are so many small herbaria actively working in floristics and taxonomy, although at the same time it is a bit sobering to realize how much need there is for financial support for herbaria.

The grant proposal evaluation committee, chaired by IAPT Council Member Steffi Ickert-Bond, worked very hard to evaluate the proposals and select ten proposals for funding. On behalf of the IAPT Council I want to thank Steffi and her committee for their time and dedication in evaluating the applications.

The list of successful applications can be found here: https://www.iaptglobal.org/grants

We encourage everyone to watch for news about the 2020 Small Collections Grant competition. We may revise the deadline date for applications to allow for more time between this competition and the research grants competition. Managing two grant competitions simultaneously is challenging!

Sincerely,

Patrick Herendeen

IAPT President