Recent News May 2007
Annual Sigma Xi field trip to the Institut de recherche en biologie végétale at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, Friday May 4, 2007.
download slide show PDF of our visit
Dr. Luc Brouillet, acting administrator and scientist at the Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, gave us an instructive and enriching tour of the research facilities located at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. The institute is part of the Université de Montréal and has 17 scientists, 11 research professionals and over 50 graduate students. The tour of covered the library and the research laboratories and facilities. These are oriented towards three research areas: “cellular mechanisms of development and plant interactions”, “biodiversity and evolution” and “ecology and management of ecosystems in populated areas”. The Institute also has the third largest herbarium in Canada, the Maire-Victorin herbarium, with over 700,000 specimens, some dating back to the 1800’s. The institute also collaborates with the Montreal Botanical Gardens and we had the opportunity to visit the greenhouses were the Botanical Gardens grow their specimens and work on research projects involving plant growth. They have access to ten growth chambers for experiments that need to be held under strict controlled environmental conditions. One of their research projects with a very practical orientation is the purification of waste water using algae.
download slide show PDF of our visit
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