The coordinator of this program, from the Latin American branch of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Gloria Jované, informed that at least 100 international institutions are involved in the project. The meeting began yesterday, Tuesday, and is scheduled to conclude on Friday.
“The digitization of the different types of plants will enable scientists, scholars, and students to not only find the various specimens, but also identify them on the Internet, without having to travel to different nurseries as was done before,” said Jované.
She went on to explain that, to date, the project has succeeded in digitalizing 1.4 million types of plants, with botanical data, of which there are 151,000 pictures, but it is expected that by the completion of the project in 2014, an estimated three million types of plants will have been incorporated into the system.
The database project, involving 175 institutions worldwide, is on the website of Jstor Plant Science, a digital journal linked to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, one of the sponsors of the Global Initiative Plant.