Landmark $14.4 million grant to the Missouri Botanical Garden marks the largest gift to botany in recent years
LOUIS, MO, Dec. 10, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Missouri Botanical Garden is excited to announce the launch of its Revolutionizing Species Identification(RSI) project, a transformative initiative to digitize the Missouri Botanical Garden’s extensive herbarium collection. The project will leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to accelerate plant species identification that will inform restoration and conservation efforts worldwide. Herbaria are the world’s libraries of preserved plant specimens, providing fundamental information on plant diversity, distribution, geography, and ecology. This landmark initiative made possible by an anonymous $14.4 million grant—the largest gift to botany in recent years—will bring 6 million plant specimens online over the next six years, making critical data freely accessible to scientists, conservationists, and policymakers globally.
AI technology will automatically detect unique plant characteristics that will be used to create an online reference library of plant features. Scientists will then be able to upload images and other data from an unidentified plant to a new project website for rapid automated species identification. This innovative project responds to the urgent global biodiversity crisis, where approximately one-third of the world’s plants are endangered and need saving. Additionally, 40,000 plant species remain unidentified with an estimated 77% likely threatened with extinction (for reference, there are 400,000 plant species known compared to 11,000 species of birds and 4,000 species of mammals).
This project will transform botany—scientists will not only identify unidentified plant specimens; they will also be able to instantly use that information to advance species conservation and restoration of endangered plant species. If this works as expected, the same technology could be deployed to drones, which automatically identify trees in a forest allowing a user on the ground to immediately know whether an endangered tree species occurs in the area. This work could also lead to the discovery of plant species with properties similar to crops like coffee and cocoa — two globally loved crops that are potentially at risk of extinction.
Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson, President of the Missouri Botanical Garden, highlighted the project’s global importance: “Plants are essential to all life, and this project allows us to harness technology to secure their future. While plants have often remained overlooked, they hold great power and can help address many challenges threatening our world. By digitizing our collection and developing AI for rapid species identification, the Missouri Botanical Garden is helping safeguard biodiversity on a global scale.”
RSI’s combination of visual scanning, multispectral imaging, and AI will create an unmatched biodiversity dataset of over eight million specimens. This dataset will enable rapid identification and analysis of plant traits, supporting targeted conservation efforts that prioritize species and habitats at risk. By partnering with cutting-edge technology, RSI will transform the role of herbaria in conservation science. This will inspire a new generation of plant science professionals, which is needed now more than ever as botany and plant taxonomy remain critically under resourced.
