INDIAN VIRTUAL HERBARIUM (IVH)

Source: Hindu

Introduction

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
Herbarium specimens are considered important tools for plant taxonomy, conservation, habitat loss and even climate change.

Key Points

With details of about 1lakh specimens, the Indian Virtual Herbarium, is generating a lot of interest & turning out to be an eye-catching endeavour.
Indian Virtual Herbarium is considered the country's biggest virtual database of flora.
The virtual herbarium presents a rich botanical diversity of the country.

It is developed by the scientists of the Botanical Survey of India(BSI), with portal bsi.gov.in has had nearly 2 lakh hits from 55 countries.
Each record in the digital herbarium includes an image of the preserved plant specimen, scientific name, collection locality, collection date, collector's name, and barcode number.
The digital herbarium includes features to extract the data state-wise, users can search plants of their states, which will help them identify regional plants & in building regional checklists.
The portal includes about one lakh images of herbarium specimens. It is said that the number of digitized species will increase to two lakh.
Scientists say that there are approximately three million plant specimens in the country which are with different herbaria located at zonal centres of the BSI and the Central National Herbarium.

Union minister of environment & forest, climate change- Bhupendra Yadav.
Director of BSI- Dr A. A. Mao.
Cyperus procerus- oldest specimen collected between June 15-20, 1696, near Chennai.
William Roxburgh, Nathaniel Wallich, and Joseph Dalton Hooker are considered the founding father of Indian Botany.

Work on the digitization of the specimens started in 2019 and most of the digitization was done by BSI.
About 52% of Indian specimens are from foreign nations and collected from 82 countries of the world during the British era.
The Indian Virtual Herbarium is deeply linked with the botanical history of the country.
The digital herbarium has some of the oldest botanical specimens dating as early as 1696.
Type specimens are those collections that help in discoveries and are considered of great significance by botanists and taxonomists.
Researchers need to examine the types of the names to confirm their identities.

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