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In News
- Recently, the Botanical Survey of India’s Plant Discoveries 2020 was released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
About
- The BSI every year compiles and documents new plant discoveries, playing a central role to fulfil India’s global commitment of comprehensive documentation and identification of plant diversity of the country.
Major Findings of the Discovery
- It has added 267 new taxa/ species to the country’s flora and of these 202 plant species are new to science while 65 others had never been reported from India.
- The new discoveries include 119 angiosperms; 3 pteridophytes; 5 bryophytes, 44 lichens; 57 fungi, 21 algae and 18 microbes.
Image Courtesy:TOI
- Among the new discoveries this year, nine new species of balsams (Impatiens) one species of wild banana (Musa pradhanii) were discovered from Darjeeling, one species each of wild Jamun (Sygygium anamalaianum) from Coimbatore and fern species (Selaginella odishana) were recorded from Kandhamal in Odisha.
- There are 14 new macro and 31 new micro fungi species recorded from various parts of India.
Image Courtesy: TH
- Geographical distribution of these newly discovered plants: 22% of the discoveries were made from the Western Ghats followed by Western Himalayas (15%), Eastern Himalayas (14%) and Northeast Ranges (12%).
- The West coast contributed 10% while the East Coast contributed (9%) in total discoveries; the Eastern Ghats and South Deccan contributed 4% of each while Central Highland and North Deccan added 3% each.
Importance of Discovery
- India has about 45,000 species of plants, already identified and classified, which account for about 7% of the total plant species of the world.
- About 28% of the Indian plants are endemic to the country.
- India being a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is committed to working towards the prime objective of the Global Strategy of Plant Conservation and the newly discovered species may offer a potential source of wild edible plants, traditional drugs, cosmetics and wild relatives of crop plants.
Western Ghats
Botanical Survey of India (BSI)
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Source: TH
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