From 22 September to 10 October 2025, Kateřina Kučerová and Tito Damiani from IOCB Prague, Mazzarine Laboureau from the University of Neuchâtel, and Davide Rovelli from the University of Parma travelled to London to conduct a sampling campaign at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, home to one of the world’s most diverse living plant collections.
The visit was coordinated by Melanie-Jayne Howes, Senior Research Leader in Kew’s Biological Chemistry team , and Thomas Freeth, Head of Plant Records and Collection Support. Together, they helped the visiting team plan and carry out the work across Kew’s living collections.
During the campaign, the team gathered more than 600 samples from plants in the Davies Alpine House and Princess of Wales Conservatory . The Davies Alpine House represents cool, high-altitude habitats, while the Princess of Wales Conservatory contains ten climatic zones ranging from arid landscapes to tropical environments.
Working with Geoffrey Kite, Juri Felix, Eliot Jan-Smith and Carlos Martel, the team extracted and analysed an initial set of 100 samples on site using Kew’s LC–MS facilities. The remaining samples were designated for further chemical profiling in the Pluskal Lab at IOCB Prague.
The campaign put DBGI’s distributed approach into practice: botanical gardens, field teams and analytical laboratories worked together to connect living collections with traceable samples and reusable chemical datasets.
