At least 1.1 million Brazilian plant samples are expected to be made available through the Reflora Virtual Herbarium Project. This was the main result presented during an event on “historical recovery and creation of a virtual herbarium for knowledge and conservation of Brazilian flora”, held from May 15-17 at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

The Virtual Herbarium will include samples cataloged by national and foreign missions on Brazilian soil since the 17th century. "The goal is for all species of Brazilian flora we are aware of to be available by 2020. To achieve this, the Reflora project offers infrastructure and investment and in return, researchers offer their collections to the herbarium," said Paulo Sergio Lacerda Beirão, CNPq Director of Agricultural, Biological and Health Sciences.

To recover digitized foreign species, the project has established partnerships with two museums holding extensive collections – the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England. The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, which will also make its collection available to the project, will be responsible for consolidating the herbarium, organizing the material sent by Reflora's two foreign partners.

The collection at the Botanical Garden has between 550,000 and 600,000 species; the Paris museum is estimated to have between 300,000 and 400,000 Brazilian samples, and Kew Gardens has 250,000. Of this amount, around 253,000 are now being organized in Rio de Janeiro, by staff at the Botanical Garden. The pilot page for the Virtual Herbarium is expected to be available for testing in December of this year.

The companies supporting the project, Natura and Vale, fund the initiative abroad, bearing the costs of skilled labor involved in the digitization of foreign collections and the exchange of researchers in order to approve the samples sent and provide training or professional improvement in the activity for similar actions in the future. "These partnerships help us to achieve the goals of the project, which are to have an in-depth knowledge of Brazilian biodiversity and train human resources," said Beirão.

The Reflora project is being funded by research funding institutions such as CNPq and CAPES and research support foundations in the states of Amazonas, Bahia, the Federal District, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Paraná, with further support from private companies such as Natura Cosméticos and Vale, totaling R$ 21.5 million.

Source:

CNPq

23 May 2013