Lam, phytochemist and taxonomist on the study of wild gingers of Sabah, Malaysia. She has been working for the past 16 years at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah.
She then pursued her undergraduate studies on organic chemistry at University Science of Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. She started working on wild gingers during her research project on essential oil and anti-toxicity and anti-microbial studies. She continued her interest on wild ginger research in her MSc study at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) on phylogenetic studies on genetics and chemotaxonomy. She completed her PhD on the taxonomy and conservation assessments at University of Malaya, Selangor in 2022 under the supervision of renowned ginger experts, Prof. Dr. Halijah Ibrahim (University of Malaya, Malaysia), Dr. Axel Dalberg Poulsen (Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh, United Kingdom) and Dr. Sam Yen Yen (Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Malaysia). She has undergone trainings on environment and statistics in Japan and New Zealand.
She has completed ginger related research projects and currently involved in ongoing project on local fruits from Borneo. The projects involved discoveries of new chemical and biological properties, knowledge transfer to students and local communities. Her commitment in this field contributes to the discoveries of new species and potential medicinal properties in the field of ginger.
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Relationship of Boesenbergia and new discoveries in Sabah, Malaysia
N.F. LAM, H. IBRAHIM, Y.Y. SAM, A. D. POULSEN, R. M. ZAKARIA
INSTITUTE FOR TROPICAL BIOLOGY AND CONSERVATION, UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SABAH, JALAN UMS, 88400 KOTA KINABALU, SABAH, MALAYSIA.
Boesenbergia is one of the small wild ginger genera in the tribe Zingibereae Meisn., subfamily Zingiberoideae Haask., family Zingiberaceae Martinov. This genus is distributed from West India eastward to China and from Nepal southward to Indonesia. The main objective of this research is to investigate the taxonomic status of the genus Boesenbergia in Sabah based on its morphological and genetic characters. In total, 16 species are recognized in Sabah, one of which is represented by two varieties. The sixteen species included the eight new species. The most distinct character for the genus is the basipetalous flowering pattern which separates Boesenbergia from other genera in the family Zingiberaceae. Results from the molecular phylogenetic study showed that Boesenbergia is monophyletic. A total of 38 species investigated using nuclear ribosomal ITS sequences resulted in two main clades which correspond with the inflorescence pattern, Clade A with distichous inflorescence and Clade B with one-sided inflorescences. The species in both clades have no correlation with the geographical distribution. The first clade consists of the species from Indochina and the second clade consists of mostly species from Borneo. Further research on horticulture, propagation, tissue culture, medicinal properties and population study of selected species will benefit the economy and conservation strategies of the species of Boesenbergia.