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Source: The post is based on the article “Indian Virtual Herbarium, biggest database of country’s flora, is a global hit” published in PIB on 7th August 2022.
What is the News?
In the ‘Mann Ki Baat ‘episode, the Prime Minister talked about the Indian Virtual Herbarium.
What is Indian Virtual Herbarium?
Developed by: Botanical Survey of India(BSI)
Purpose: It is a digital database of plants and preserved parts of plants with labelled information.
Features: The herbarium provides information on plants in different categories such as Cryptogams (spore-bearing plants). Phanerogams (seed-bearing plants). Both the groups are again divided into two categories which include genera; specimen and type specimens.
– Each record in the digital herbarium includes an image of the preserved plant specimen, scientific name, collection locality, and collection date, collector name, and barcode number.
– The digital herbarium also includes features to extract the data State-wise, and users can search plants of their own States, which will help them identify regional plants and in building regional checklists.
Significance: This is the biggest virtual database of flora in the country. Moreover, this database also has immense use in plant identification, systematics studies and ecological studies.
