Acclimatization of plant collection from Moyo Island, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia in Purwodadi Botanic Gardens

There is limited knowledge on the handling of plant specimens for botanical garden collection following field exploration. One key step is called acclimatization with the aim to adapt the newly collected specimens from their natural habitat into a new environment of Botanic Gardens. This research aimed to observe acclimatization process of living plant specimens collected from Moyo Island, West Nusa Tenggara in Purwodadi Botanic Gardens, East Java, Indonesia. We observe the acclimatization of 123 accession numbers of general collection and 17 accession numbers of orchid collection collected from Moyo Island. We investigated successfully adapting plants from the exploration site in Purwodadi Botanic Gardens as well as the non-survived specimens and analyze the mechanism of their adaptation. The study was conducted at a nursery unit in 2013, with an observational method. The results show that 75% of plant living specimens (i.e. 96 accessions of the general plant and nine accessions of orchid) collected from Moyo Island could adapt in Purwodadi Botanic Gardens, while the rest were unable to survive in the garden. Similarity in environmental variables between Moyo Island and Purwodadi Botanic Gardens seemed to influence the comparatively high survivorship of the plant specimens. Nonetheless, the orchid collection was harder to adapt in the garden compared to the general plant collection.