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KEW gardens is mentioned prominently in our history books in chapters relating to the growth of the rubber industry in the country during the 1800's.
The 250-year-old establishment, which started as a royal estate in 1759 was handed over to the British government in 1849.
In the second half of the 19th century the establishment dedicated itself to moving plant and seeds from one colony to the other, where the crops had a potential to be grown and harvested commercially.
Director of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Sir Peter Crane, concedes that today the British may be accused of bio-piracy for carrying that out.
"But at that time it was commercially viable for the British to plant rubber trees in Malaya. The rubber tree grows in the natural forests in Brazil and was thus susceptible to the indigenous pests," he said when met during the International Media and Environment Summit in Kuching recently.
"To make the industry work it needed intensive labour which was available in this part of the world," he added.
"Likewise coffee is no Brazilian native plant but was introduced there from Ethiopia, to be planted as a commercial crop," said Crane.
He said, Kew also played a key role in disseminating cinchona plants (from which quinine is derived) to countries in the tropics where malaria was prevalent.
"Brazilians have used quinine for years as treatment for malaria at that time and it was effective and thus useful to people in other tropical countries who were exposed to this disease," said Crane.
Malaysia's contribution to the world was the nutmeg, he said and that Kew's quest now is far from its commercial ventures of the earlier part of the last century.
"Kew's mission today is for the sustainable use of its vast seed bank for conservation purposes," he said.
Its huge seed bank contributes to its joint projects with 18 countries including Malaysia under the convention on bio-diversity which governs the way in which biological research should be treated internationally.
It is a formal agreement on what we can and cannot do, said Crane.
"The bank in London's Kew Gardens is treated as a back-up and when other countries set up their own banks we assist them whenever needed," he said.
Kew works closely with the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia and Yayasan Sabah towards sustainable forestry practices.
Crane said that some of the plants in Kew's banks are species which no longer grow in the wild like the Ladies Slipper which has been re-introduced to the wild.
"We go to great lengths to introduce the same genetic code of the plant before we re-introduce it into the wilds again," he said.
"At the end of the day we are all gardeners and all fighting to keep nature alive for the benefit of our future generations," said Crane.
For more information, log on to www.rbgkew.org.uk
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