Final workshop on setting up a digital herbarium brings the continuation of the cooperation to blossom

In view of the quantity of herbarium specimens and the work ahead of us to digitise them, humility is the dominant emotion. Nevertheless, motivation and confidence prevail among the scientists who took part in the final workshop at the end of November 2021.

In addition to the actual project participants from the botanical institute of Uzbekistan, the University of Greifswald and the Succow Foundation, botanists and botanical institute staff from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan were also present. The work done so far, but also the work still to come, cannot be appreciated enough.

The herbarium closes a considerable gap in available data on the plant diversity of Central Asia and makes available to a worldwide audience what has been stored in dark herbarium archives for almost 200 years.

In the medium term, it is planned to transfer this digital herbarium to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and thus link it to billions of biodiversity data worldwide and make it available.

The project is being implemented within the framework of the funding programme "Pilot measures for partnerships in science, research and education with the Central Asian and South Caucasus countries", financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

To the presentation of the workshop