A conservatory garden of 300 acres at Palode, and the centre of excellence tag it carries for ex situ conservation

Background

The Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute is a conservatory botanic garden and research institution of the Government of Kerala, working under the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment. It was founded on 17 November 1979, and the aim set for it was the conservation of tropical plant resources of the country and of Kerala in particular, along with research on the sustainable use of that plant wealth. The idea came up after the first United Nations Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972, and Professor A. Abraham, the Founder Director, turned it into a garden; the Kew Botanic Gardens had a part in its design and lay-out in the early years. It was formerly called the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, and it keeps, over 300 acres, a conservatory garden of the country's wild tropical plant genetic resources. Conservation biology, plant taxonomy, biotechnology, phytochemistry, microbiology and ethnomedicine are among the fields it researches. The institute came under the Council in 2003 and was renamed in memory of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 2011. The Ministry of Environment and Forests recognises it as a National Centre of Excellence for ex situ conservation of tropical plant diversity, and the campus is at Palode in Thiruvananthapuram.