Agriculture – Page 2 – Global Records India

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.

10 more Indian wetlands sites get Ramsar tag, number rises to 64

Six of them are in Tamil Nadu and one each in Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha

India has added 10 more Ramsar sites, or wetlands that are of international importance, taking the number of such sites to 64, Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav said on Wednesday.

“Absolutely thrilled to inform that 10 more Indian wetlands have got Ramsar recognition as wetlands of international importance,” Mr. Yadav tweeted.

The 10 new sites — six in Tamil Nadu and one each in Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha — encompass an area of 1,51,842.41 hectares, bringing India’s total wetland area to 1.2 million hectares.

The sites are Koothankulam Bird Sanctuary, Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve, Vembannur Wetland Complex, Vellode Bird Sanctuary, Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary and Udhayamarthandapuram Bird Sanctuary, all in Tamil Nadu, Satkosia Gorge in Odisha, Nanda Lake in Goa, Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary in Karnataka, and Sirpur Wetland in Madhya Pradesh.

Until 2012, India had 26 Ramsar sites, with the last decade witnessing a meteoric rise. On July 26, Mr. Yadav announced that India had added five Ramsar sites.

Kerala’s damselfly checklist gets a new member

Anamalai Reed-tail first spotted at Peechi Wildlife Sanctuary

The odonates’ checklist of Kerala has now grown to 182 with the discovery of a new damselfly species from the Western Ghats in the Peechi Wildlife Sanctuary in Thrissur.

Three entomologists, Kalesh Sadasivan, Vinayan P. Nair and Abraham Samuel of the Travancore Nature History Society (TNHS), have identified the species, Anamalai Reed-tail (scientific name: Protosticta anamalaica Sadasivan, Nair and Samuel, 2022). The discovery has been published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

The tiny insect was first spotted at Ponmudi hills in the Peechi Wildlife Sanctuary that forms part of the Nelliampathies–Anamalais sub-unit of the Munnar landscape in November 2021. The group later spotted the same species from Mankulam, Malakkappara and Edamalakudy. This is the second species belonging to the damselfly genus Protosticta to be described by the TNHS researchers after Ponmudi Reed-tail ( Protosticta ponmudiensis) that was described in 2015 from Ponmudi hills in Thiruvananthapuram.

The addition of Protosticta anamalaica to the checklist raises the odonata species diversity of the Western Ghats to 208 with 81 endemics. Kerala has 182 species with 69 endemics.

India hands 44,000 MT of urea to crisis-hit Sri Lanka

Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Gopal Baglay met Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera to inform him about the arrival of the shipment

India on Sunday handed more than 44,000 metric tonnes of urea under a credit line extended to crisis-ridden Sri Lanka, as part of New Delhi’s ongoing efforts to support the island nation’s farmers and help bolster bilateral cooperation for food security, the Indian High Commission in Colombo said.

Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Gopal Baglay met Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera to inform him about the arrival of more than 44,000 metric tonnes of urea.

A teacher’s green mission in Odisha

Bijay Kumar Bhatt has singlehandedly planted 10,000 palm trees

As a teacher Bijay Kumar Bhatt has inspired scores of students to learn and succeed in life through his classroom teachings in Odisha’s Puri district over past two decades. But, he is eulogised as a role model for what he has achieved outside the classroom.

Mr. Bhatt has singlehandedly planted 30,000 trees in Astaranga area, a coastal pocket in Puri which has borne the brunt of cyclones, floods and tidal surge for years. The trees he has chosen to plant are palm, date palm and neem.

“It was the 1999 Super Cyclone that stirred me up. Lakhs of trees were uprooted while tidal surge had inundated vast stretches of cropland making it worthless for taking up crop in future. I could not imagine the green cover regaining its pervious shape in quick time,” he recollected.

India exported 1.8 million tonnes wheat to several countries since ban: Food Secretary

India has exported 1.8 million tonnes of wheat to a dozen-odd countries, including Bangladesh and Afghanistan, since the country banned exports of the grain on May 13, according to Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey.

About 33,000 tonnes of wheat as humanitarian assistance has already been supplied to Afghanistan against the commitment of 50,000 tonne, he said.

Mr. Pandey, addressing a ministerial conference on ‘uniting for global food security’ held at Berlin, Germany on June 24, said India has always taken the needs of the world into consideration, even while meeting the onerous obligations of feeding its population of 1.38 billion people, an official statement said.

“After the regulation until June 22nd this fiscal year, 1.8 million tonnes of wheat have been shipped out, almost four times from the previous year to countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Israel, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Switzerland, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam and Yemen,” he said.

New spider from Thar desert named after Malayali arachnologist

Pseudomogrus sudhii inhabits dry grass blades of the desert

A new species of spider discovered from the Thar desert of Rajasthan has been named after a Malayalee arachnologist.

The new species of jumping spider, Pseudomogrus sudhii, has been named after Sudhikumar A.V., Head, Department of Zoology, Christ College, Irinjalakuda, and founder of the Centre for Animal Taxonomy and Ecology (CATE) in recognition of his contributions to the field of Indian arachnology.

The jumping spider was discovered during a joint exploration by Dmitri Logunov (curator, Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester, UK), Rishikesh Balkrishna Tripathi and Ashish Kumar Jangid of Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

India’s newest recorded snail named after Western Ghats

The Haploptychius sahyadriensis is endemic to the Vishalgad Conservation Reserve in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district

The Western Ghats of Maharashtra have yielded a carnivorous land snail new to the world of science.

The Haploptychius sahyadriensis, recorded from the northern Western Ghats of Maharashtra, is the third member of the genus Haploptychius. The other two – H. andamanicus and H. pfeifferi – were recorded in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the 1860s.

** Jharkhand to get WHO award for tobacco control

National Tobacco Control Programme was launched in Jharkhand in 2012 when the tobacco prevalence rate in the State was 51.1 per cent

Recognising its efforts in controlling tobacco consumption, the World Health Organization (WHO) has selected Jharkhand for the World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) Award-2022, an official said on Sunday.

Stata Tobacco Control Cell of the Health Department will receive the award on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day in New Delhi on May 31, Jharkhand’s nodal officer of National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) Lalit Ranjan Pathak told PTI.

** New plant species of the genus Ophiorrhiza spotted in State

Researchers have come across a new plant species of the genus Ophiorrhiza, a group of plants valued for their medicinal uses, in the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats region.

Researchers spotted the new species from the Adichilthotty colony, near Malakkapara, in Thrissur district during a plant exploration trip. It has been named Ophiorrhiza sasidharaniana after Prof. A. Sasidharan, former Botany Department head of the University College, Thiruvananthapuram.

The journal Annales Botanici Fennici, brought out by the Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board, has published a paper on the discovery by researchers from the University of Kerala and the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (JNTBGRI), Palode.

Kerala / th