AGENTSCHAP PLANTENTUIN MEISE

Their core work

Meise Botanic Garden is one of the world's largest botanical gardens, housing over 4 million plant specimens and extensive natural history collections. Their H2020 work centers on digitising and interconnecting scientific collections across Europe — making biodiversity data FAIR-compliant, machine-readable, and accessible to researchers worldwide. They contribute taxonomic and systematic expertise to pan-European research infrastructures, and engage the public on food security and responsible research topics. Their role is essentially turning centuries of physical specimen collections into usable digital knowledge for biodiversity science.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their early H2020 projects (2016-2018) were more diverse: public engagement on food security (BigPicnic), molecular plant identification (Plant.ID), and initial digitisation planning (ICEDIG). From 2019 onward, their focus sharpened dramatically toward large-scale digital infrastructure for scientific collections — SYNTHESYS PLUS, DiSSCo Prepare, and BiCIKL form a coherent cluster around making biodiversity collections interoperable and digitally accessible. The addition of SciCoMove in 2021 signals a new interest in the historical and cultural dimensions of scientific collecting.

Meise is positioning itself as a key node in Europe's distributed digital infrastructure for natural science collections (DiSSCo/ESFRI), making them a strong partner for any project needing access to or integration of biodiversity specimen data.

How they like to work

Meise operates exclusively as a participant — they have not coordinated any H2020 projects, suggesting they contribute specialist expertise rather than lead large initiatives. However, with 101 unique partners across 29 countries, they are deeply embedded in the European natural history collections community. Their repeat involvement in interconnected projects (SYNTHESYS PLUS → DiSSCo Prepare → BiCIKL) shows they are a trusted, long-term partner in this ecosystem rather than a one-off contributor.

Extensive European network with 101 unique consortium partners across 29 countries, largely centered around the natural history collections and biodiversity research community. Their network spans nearly all EU member states plus associated countries, reflecting the pan-European nature of the DiSSCo and SYNTHESYS infrastructures.

What sets them apart

Meise Botanic Garden combines one of Europe's largest living plant collections with deep involvement in the digital transformation of natural heritage. Unlike pure data or IT partners, they bring real specimens, taxonomic authority, and centuries of curatorial knowledge to digitisation projects. For consortium builders, they offer a rare combination: domain expertise in plant systematics plus hands-on experience with ESFRI-level research infrastructure design (DiSSCo).

Highlights from their portfolio

• SYNTHESYS PLUS
  Largest funding (EUR 374,744) — an integrating activity for Europe's natural history collections covering digitisation, systematics, and taxonomy across the continent.
• DiSSCo Prepare
  Preparatory phase for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, an ESFRI landmark — positions Meise within Europe's top-tier research infrastructure roadmap.
• BiCIKL
  Builds a Biodiversity Knowledge Library linking genomics, literature, specimens, and taxon names via linked open data — the most technically ambitious data integration project in their portfolio.