About us
“Núcleo de Pesquisas em Florestas Tropicais” (NPFT) – the name of our research group – is not easily translated into English and a rough approximation would be something like “Tropical Forest Research Lab”. The NPFT was founded in the Department of Plant Science at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in 1981. Since then, the main goal of our group has been to build up human resources capable of working on multiple themes related to the conservation, domestication and management of native plants. With the aim of helping with the understanding of domestication processes, supporting the development of management techniques and conservation strategies, we have conducted several studies of demography, reproductive biology and ecology, population and landscape genetics, phylogeography, ethnoecology, and ethnobotany. Therefore, our motivation goes beyond hypotheses driven studies only and the implications of our results for the conservation and use of native plant species is what we see as our most valuable contribution. So far, species of the Atlantic Forest biome have been the focus of NPFT, among them Araucaria angustifolia, Euterpe edulis, Mimosa scabrella, Ilex paraguariensis, Ocotea porosa, Drymis brasiliensis, Rumohra adiantiformis, Butia eriospatha, Podocarpus lambertii, Ocotea catharinensis, Bromelia antiacantha, and Varronia curassavica.
Here are some pictures of our work:
Araucaria angustifolia cone collected for genetic characterization and germplasm conservation
Studies of reproductive biology and pollination ecology (Sciaridae insect pollinating the flower of Ocotea catharinensis)
Phenological studies (Bromelia antiacantha flowering)
Allozyme marker used for genetic diversity characterization
Studies of seed dispersal (Ramphastos dicolorus feeding on Euterpe edulis fruits)
Ethnobotanical studies
Demographic studies (Podocarpus lambertii seedling)
Experiment with propagation of Dicksonia sellowiana
Experiment with management techniques for the extraction of Drimys brasiliensis bark
