Our Partners
Meise Botanic Garden
The mission of Meise Botanic Garden is to build a sustainable future through discovery, research and conservation of plants. This is reflected in its current research, collections, and dissemination activities. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of our focus areas. From 2004 onwards, Meise Botanic Garden has successfully initiated projects renewing infrastructure in the DRC. It successfully rehabilitated the Botanical Garden in Kisantu (Central Congo), the herbarium of the University of Kisangani, the Botanical Garden of the University of Kisangani, the Herbarium of the INERA-Yangambi and the coffee gene bank of the INERA-Yangambi. Furthermore, Meise Botanic Garden coordinates reforestation projects around Virunga National Park (North Kivu).
Meise Botanic Garden is a partner in large projects like FORETS and YPS. Moreover, it is involved with different research projects around biodiversity, climate, and the carbon cycle in the Congo basin and specifically in the Yangambi area (see below). For all these projects, Meise Botanic Garden collaborates intensively with local partners, providing education and training, which contributes to capacity building in DR Congo. Meise Botanic Garden therefore has a partnership with different Congolese institutions and governments: INERA / Institut National pour l’Étude et la Recherche Agronomiques (Ministry of Agriculture), UNIKIS / University of Kisangani (Ministry of Education), and ICCN / Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (Ministry of Environment).
Project Coordinator
Piet has been studying the diversity of wild coffee species in Central and West Africa for 25 years. As a result of this research, he has described several new coffee species and contributed to several other publications on Coffea. Since 2009, he is involved in several projects in the DR Congo (Rehabilitation and digitization of herbaria, rehabilitation of the Botanic Garden Kisantu & the coffee collection in Yangambi, training of local herbarium technicians and botanists). He served as Director of Collections in Meise Botanic Garden from 2016 to 2021 and he continues his work here as Senior Researcher.
Project Associate
Filip is a plant ecologist with a research focus on evolution and ecology from a plant trait perspective. His research includes studying the evolution of seed traits and other plant traits across angiosperms using comparative methods. In other projects, plant traits are being studied at the population level using molecular and quantitative genetic methods. Since 2016, Filip has been involved in studying the diversity of Coffea canephora in the DRC and has undertaken several field missions. From 2019 onwards, Filip is also the scientific manager of the seedbank at Meise Botanic Garden and since January 2023 the Scientific Director of Meise Botanic Garden.
Project Associate
As an evolutionary botanist, Steven Janssens has a broad interest in plant ecology, evolution and conservation. Steven has worked as a senior researcher in Meise Botanic Garden since 2013, where he focuses on unravelling evolutionary patterns and speciation mechanisms within flowering plants using a subset of different scientific disciplines including biogeography, diversification analyses, population genetics, phylogenetics, species distribution modelling, and bioinformatics. Although he works on a broad range of angiosperm lineages, he is mostly interested in bananas (Musaceae), coffee (Rubiaceae) and wild beans (Fabaceae). His research aims to assess fundamental research questions about the origin and evolution of crops and their close relatives to provide valuable insights that can be used at the level of applied research, such as crop breeding activities or the selection of disease-resistant or drought-tolerant species.
Research Scientist
Robrecht has a degree in bioscience engineering from KU Leuven and defended his PhD on the CoffeeBridge project in January 2025. His research contributed to the characterization of the Robusta coffee genetic resources in the Congo basin (DRC), focussing on geno- and phenotyping and the quality of the coffee genetic lines in the Yangambi collection. His passion for coffee started in Peru, when he was investigating cocoa beans for his master’s thesis and discovered the world of coffee processing and quality. His previous work experience was as a food technologist in a research and development laboratory in Leuven. As a licensed Robusta Q-grader, he is a specialist in coffee quality and sensory profiles. He is a coffee hobbyist and enthusiast who is passionate about discussing, exploring, and collaborating on the potential of the Robusta genetic resources in the Congo Basin.
Administrative Project Manager
Aiden is a biologist from KU Leuven, with a focus on the evolution and ecology of crop wild relatives. His master’s thesis focused on the evolution of leaf traits across African Coffea species. As of July 2024, he assists in the management of Meise Botanic Garden’s projects in central Africa, including financial and narrative reporting, public communication, and coordination.
