Development of New Herbarium Boxes to Ensure the Longevity of SING’s collections

Serena Lee, Jana Leong-Skornickova, and David Middleton

Introduction

Natural history collections housed in herbaria, museums, and universities are fundamental to research on biodiversity, particularly in the fields of taxonomy, phylogenetics, and biogeography. New applications for these collections have emerged over time in response to societal and scientific demands and often taking advantage of technological breakthroughs. These include the use of collections in DNA sequencing work, testing for chemical and pharmacological compounds, and measuring carbon isotopes to investigate CO2 levels over time. The specimens and their accompanying label data also provide invaluable information on species distributions over time, including the rate of decline of species that require conservation action, the spread of invasives, and a wealth of information available for ecological and biogeographical modelling.

The Herbarium of Singapore Botanic Gardens (SING) houses an estimated 750,000 herbarium specimens, 10,000 specimens in spirit, and 9,000 type specimens. It was founded in 1875 and grew rapidly from the late 1880s onwards due to the activities of prolific plant collectors such as Ridley, Corner, Holttum, Henderson, Carr, and Chew. These collections are mainly from Singapore, Peninsular Malaysia, Malaysian Borneo, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. The current staff of Singapore Botanic Gardens (SBG), alongside activities within Singapore, continue to collect in these regions plus the countries of continental Southeast Asia, Brunei, and parts of Indonesia. This recent collecting activity has often been focused on countries with very low collecting densities, such as Myanmar and Laos, or in areas within better-collected countries where there is high diversity but low collecting density, such as southeastern Vietnam, western Thailand, the Temburong district of Brunei, central Sarawak, and so forth. These collections are integral to the research efforts of the Singapore Botanic Gardens’ staff and have been the basis for the description of over 200 new plant species in the last three years.

The staff of SBG are now engaged on the Flora of Singapore, a project to catalogue and describe the estimated 3,000 species of bryophytes, lycophytes, ferns, gymnosperms, and flowering plants native, naturalised, or casual in Singapore. This work will primarily be based on a study of the approximately 38,000 collections from Singapore in SING, along with dedicated fieldwork and sister projects in the molecular lab. All of these projects require access to well-curated herbarium collections and an infrastructure that guarantees the care and maintenance of these collections in perpetuity.

Originality and innovativeness

Since the collections were moved into the Botany Centre in 2006, the specimens have been housed in cardboard boxes (Fig. 1). These boxes, although perfectly functional for everyday use, are prone to three identifiable major threats: fire, water, and pests.

Fig. 1. SING boxes before the upgrade.

Photo: Herbarium Archives

The Herbarium has a fire-suppression system but the current system is water-based and, if triggered (even accidentally due to a false alarm), could have led to catastrophic water damage to the collections. Earlier systems of pest management, such as fumigation, are now incompatible with ISO standards and have not been available in Singapore since 2006. Our current exemption from the ban on the use of mercuric chloride, the next line of chemical defence for the specimens, could end at any time. SING has other methods for monitoring potential pests (pheromone traps) and dealing with minor pest outbreaks (freezing of the material), but these would be insufficient in the case of a major outbreak. We, therefore, decided to investigate the feasibility of eliminating the remote but real threats to the longevity of the collections through the design and implementation of a new and better storage system.

We looked at various storage solutions and pest management strategies employed in major herbaria around the world. The strategies employed by other herbaria did not suit our needs because they entailed very expensive structural interventions to the entire building of the Botany Centre, a significant reduction in current and future storage capacity, and/or a significant reduction in ease of access to the collections and the consequent additional strain on our manpower.

Various herbaria in the tropics have employed large Ziploc bags within boxes or on open shelves as an additional barrier for pests. Users generally find that this greatly impedes convenient access to the specimens and, additionally, relies greatly on staff and visitors maintaining the discipline of always 'rezipping' the plastic bag after each use. With time, the bags housing specimens that are frequently accessed, such as those under active research, become worn, ripped and/or difficult to close, thereby returning the collection to the vulnerable state identified above.

Fig. 2. This is how the new herbarium boxes open for easy shelving and retrieval.

Photo: SING Herbarium Archives

The idea of plastic boxes surfaced several times during our brainstorming sessions. Plastic as a material is durable, fairly light-weight, waterproof and can be made airtight. Airtight boxes ensure that if there were to be a pest outbreak that the outbreak would be tightly contained and unable to spread through the herbarium. We found that a small number of herbaria had deployed plastic boxes but the feedback we received was rather negative. We continued to toy with the idea of plastic boxes and, in particular, we examined the factors that led to negative impressions of those plastic boxes that had been employed elsewhere to see whether those disadvantages were unavoidably inherent or whether they could be overcome. The two samples we received were made of non-transparent plastic, were not airtight, and one of them was prone to warping. We concluded that the problem was not in the concept of plastic boxes per se but in the existing designs. We, therefore, set out to design a plastic box fully compatible to our needs. The new SING boxes have the following features (Figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 3. Folders can be pulled out using the white tray below for support (as well as prevent paper cuts!).

Photo: Bazilah Ibrahim

1. Air-tight/waterproof, and able to withstand repeated freezing.

2. Transparent, to aid visual inspection of the content of the boxes.

3. Easy to handle in terms of acceptable weight and access to the specimens. In addition, they had to be as close in size to our cardboard boxes as possible in order to be housed in our existing compactor system.

4. Stackable, and stable when stacked, up to 10 full boxes high.

5. With a tray to be able to pull out the specimens easily.

6. Various components easily replaceable.

7. With a provision to include labelling of the box’s contents on the front lid.

It was calculated that we would require 23,000 boxes to house our existing collection.

The box was designed in several phases. The initial concept over several rounds was developed with 3D drawings. This was followed by several rounds of boxes produced by 3D printing until we had settled on a design. Finally, the mould was made and boxes were produced using the actual plastic materials with a few more rounds of fine tuning the final design.

Techniques that address current or future challenges faced by National Parks Board (NParks) or the larger landscape industry

The collections housed in the Herbarium of Singapore Botanic Gardens are a valuable record of the plant diversity of Singapore and the wider region over time, and a resource to be used to investigate the research questions noted in the Introduction. The current and future challenge to NParks is how to ensure that the collections are both protected in perpetuity whilst at the same time ensuring that their primary purpose as a resource for research is maintained. Our previous system of cardboard boxes failed on one of these goals, as they could not ensure that the collections were adequately protected for the long term. The design and deployment of the new plastic boxes recognised that both goals must be met: the design of the new boxes ensures that the collections are offered much better protection whilst at the same time ensuring that they are still easy to access in order to study the contents.

We believe that the SING boxes are suitable for use in other tropical herbaria in the region and beyond. Unlike the very specialised and costly equipment employed in herbaria in developed countries, our plastic boxes can be manufactured at a reasonable price and would, therefore, be suitable for developing countries. Because the design and the mould (the two most expensive parts of the project) have already been developed and can be used to manufacture up to 500,000 boxes, we could make the mould available to interested regional herbaria as part of our capacity-building efforts.

Project Management – Budget and timeline

From the initial idea to the deployment of boxes in the Herbarium took five years. • 2012–2014 –Survey of international storage systems, development of ideas, provisional price estimates from manufacturers. • April 2015 – Budget for box replacement approved. • 26 November 2015 to 6 January 2016 – Tender. • 17 May 2016 – Letter of award. • 26 July 2016 – Works order released. • August, September 2016 – 3D concept drawings. • October 2016 to March 2017 – 3D-printed samples produced, individually evaluated, and improvements made. • May to July 2017 – Actual prototypes with mould produced and improved. • 4 September to 6 October 2017 – 1152 boxes were delivered each day. The Herbarium staff were sorted into teams to deliver the boxes to the collections, move the specimens from the old box to the new, and dismantle and dispose of the old cardboard boxes.

The cost for design, manufacture and deployment of boxes = $1.4 million (c. SGD$61 per box; this is cheaper than commercially produced air-tight boxes of similar size, in spite of its far more complex design).

Collaboration & Partnership

The successful design, manufacture, delivery and deployment of the new plastic herbarium boxes involved many collaborations and partnerships. In the first instance, the Herbarium team contacted many international herbaria to survey the kinds of storage systems they used and learn about the various pros and cons. Secondly, we had to discuss with manufacturers just how feasible our desired outcomes would be. Thirdly, the Herbarium receives many visitors per year and the proof of concept is in the response that our local and international herbarium users have to our new boxes. So far, these have been entirely positive. Additionally, the huge exercise of receiving and installing 23,000 boxes, 1152 per day every day for a month, brought the Herbarium team together in a very positive way with a real sense of achievement (Figs. 4 & 5). For fungal and bryophyte collections, we had cardboard trays manufactured to fit into these boxes so that paper pockets can fit neatly into two columns within these boxes.

Fig. 4. Team work! Just a day in the workflow (more staff not in picture).

Photo: SING Herbarium Archives

How you may procure this design for the use of these boxes in your Herbarium

Since the design cost has already been “absorbed” by us, if you have any enquiries on it, feel free to write to myself (Serena_Lee@Nparks.gov.sg) and we will direct you to the manufacturers who are holding the mould for the design for a quote to your country. The boxes will definitely be only a fraction of what we paid for them and we have been using them for the last 4 years to confirm that the design is as good as we think it is! The acronym on the boxes as well as strap colours can be changed to fit your herbarium.

To date, a few herbaria in Gibraltar, Laos, Vietnam and New Guinea have shown their interest in acquiring such boxes and we have shared our contacts with them.

Fig. 5. All done! SING Herbarium now.

Photo: SING Herbarium Archives

Serena Lee, Senior Manager (Herbarium), Singapore Botanic Gardens

David Middleton, Keeper of the Herbarium, Singapore Botanic Gardens

Jana Leong-Skornickova, Principal Researcher, Singapore Botanic Gardens