Kerala Forest Research Institute creates digital herbarium

27th May 2013
Kerala Forest Research Institute creates digital herbarium

Peechi( Thrissur district, Kerala) May 28, 2013: The Kerala Forest Research Institute has set up a digital hebarium – India’s largest of its kind – detailing over 10,000 specimens, 2040 species and 203 families.
The herbarium is a storehouse of mounted specimens arranged according to a known system of classification.
 
KFRI herbarium was started in early 1980s with regular field collections of specimens. Now it holds over 10306 specimens and recognized internationally by the acronym KFRI by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT).
Apart from general collections, KFRI-herbarium has a complete collection of medicinal plants in South India and a pan Indian collection of palms and bamboos of India including Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The species in the herbaria are indexed in alphabetical order with collection numbers under respective plant families.

The families are arranged according to the system of classification of flowering plants by Benthem and Hooker with delimitation to certain families in accordance with their current concepts. The predominant plant families in the collection are Poaceae (171 spp.), Orchidaceae (151 spp.), Arecaceae (109 spp.), Fabaceae (81 spp.), Euphorbiaceae (96 spp.), Rubiaceae (90 spp.) and Compositae (14 spp.). The herbarium also represented with 90 species of pteridophytes.
The Project is led by Investigators: Dr. C. Renuka, Dr. VB Sreekumar, V.B and Mr K. H. Hussain who provided the concept and design. Project development was done by Ajay K.G (Beehive) and the portal, http://kfriherbarium.org  is hosted by Beehive Digital Concepts, Cochin.