Plant taxonomy: Cooperation, innovation, productivity

Abstract

Floristic taxonomic research, looking for constant differences between species, is a very time-consuming and slow process. The flora of the Malay Archipelago is estimated to have 45,000 vascular plant species and the Flora Malesiana project that describes them has completed c. 1/3rd in 75 years. Presently, the flora is heavily threatened because of land use and climate change. We have to speed up the flora writing to understand what will be threatened and how to counter the threats. Innovation using Next Generation Sequencing of DNA to find the species in combination with Image Recognition might help to increase speed. Another aspect is cooperation, more international scientists should be involved, also students and citizens via citizen science projects. Citizens can help to gather information (observations and collecting). Once the flora is better known, monitoring of the flora by regular inventories (done by non-scientists in the Netherlands) helps to see which plants are threatened or become plagues and causes can then be investigated. Monitoring will help to change energy consumption (no more fossil energy), agriculture, industry, and living: improve our climate, and save the planet.