Indian Virtual Herbarium, biggest database of country’s flora, is a global hit

The portal, with nearly one lakh images of specimens, recorded two lakh hits from 55 countries since its July 1 launch; site to host all of India’s herbaria by 2024

With details of about one lakh plant specimens, Indian Virtual Herbarium, the biggest virtual database of flora in the country, is generating a lot of interest and turning out to be an eye-catching endeavour. While herbarium specimens are considered important tools for plant taxonomy, conservation, habitat loss and even climate change, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently described Indian Virtual Herbarium as an example of how digital tools can help us connect to our roots.

In the ‘ Mann Ki Baat ‘ episode on July 31, 2022, the Prime Minister spoke about the novel initiative and said that Indian Virtual Herbarium is an interesting collection of plants and preserved parts of plants. “The virtual herbarium also presents a rich botanical diversity of the country. I am convinced that Indian Virtual Herbarium will turn out to be an important resource for research on plants in the country,” Mr. Modi said.

Developed by scientists of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), Indian Virtual Herbarium was inaugurated by Union Minister of Environment Forest and Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav on July 1 in Kolkata. Only five weeks since its launch, the portal https://ivh.bsi.gov.in has 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, 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 to identify regional plants and in building regional checklists.

The portal includes about one lakh images of herbarium specimens; Director of Botanical Survey of India (BSI) Dr. A.A. Mao said by the end of this year the number of digitized species will increase to two lakh. “By the 2024, we plan to provide a platform to all the herbaria in the country so that they can display their herbarium collection on the platform,” Dr. Mao said.

Scientists say that there are approximately three million plant specimens in the country which are with different herbaria that are located at zonal centers of BSI and at the Central National Herbarium located at Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah in West Bengal.