This is our fourth year running with our threatened flora project collaboration with the Seed Conservation Centre based at the laboratories in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. The collaboration is part the Kildare College Enlight Program where eight students from Years 8 to 10 are extended in their Science studies. This unique collaboration not only provides an engaging learning experience and addresses the broader needs of students, but connects the core curriculum with the real world.
For any school program to assure the high academic achievement of students, there should be an active partnership between the school and community to address the social and personal, as well as the academic needs of young people. Studies have shown that collaborative programs like this one, have positive results on higher academic achievement, attitudes of students, higher aspirations and credits earned, more positive mental health, and increase the number of youth who go on to tertiary studies.
This term, our partners, Dr. Jenny Guerin and Dr. Daniel Duval, from the Seed Conservation Centre,collaborated with Kildare College to assist the students deflask five threatened native orchid species that we have been working on for the last two years. Deflasking is the process whereby seedlings that have been produced in laboratory conditions are removed from the flask and ‘introduced’ to standard orchid nursery conditions.100+ critically endangered native terrestrial orchids - Caladenia xanthochila, Caladenia argocalla, Thylemitra cyanapicata, Pterostylis cycnocephala and Pterostylis psammophila were deflasked in the space of two hours. Much of the laboratory work required to get the plants to this stage has been done over the last two years by Kildare College students, from isolating and culturing specific symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi, to plating the seeds on petri dishes in aseptic conditions, and then germinating them in a growth incubator.
Many of the plants grown in flasks have been held here at Kildare College in our plant growth room that has artificial grow lights, an incubator and a laminar flow cabinet. This is quite a rarity for secondary schools to have this specialised equipment to propagate plants with specific requirements such as terrestrial orchids, in large numbers.
Paul Beltrame
Learning Leader
