give the importance of herbaria - Biology - Photosynthesis in Higher Plants

Question

give the importance of herbaria

Gayathri S Nair · Answer

(i) It is an invaluable conservatory of plant material and
data
(ii) It is storehouses of collection including the valuable type
specimens The herbaria greatly aid in all kinds of taxonomic
researches
(iii) Serves as a fundamental resource for identification of all
plants of the world
(iv) It serves as a source for collections biodiversity Most
estimates on global biodiversity today are based on herbarium
collection only
(v) It aids in biodiversity monitoring by carrying out security
of herbarium collection to obtain quantitative baseline data on the
distribution and abundance of keystone species is essential for all
monitoring programmes
(vi) It serves as a repository of voucher specimens on which
varieties Botanical researches are carried out
(vii) Aids in assessment of conservation status of a taxon
(viii) Vast collection of a particular species in a herbarium
aids in assessing the diversity or variations exhibited by a
species in its distributional ranges helping in population biology
studies
(ix) It serves as a source for search of new genetic material
for improvement of cultivated stock
(x) The tags of herbarium carry all the information about
habitat, habit, local name, flower colour and other characters of
the plant, use of plant, frequency and abundance of species etc It
also includes the morphological description, range of distribution,
variation and uses In this way it provides data for botanical,
ethnobotanical and phytogeographical studies etc
(xi) Herbarium serves as an aid in teaching botany Dried
specimen is available all the time as compared to the fresh plant
which may or may not be available It helps in identifying the newly
collected specimen
(xii) Specimen may be used as a source of material for Anatomy,
Palynology and Cytotaxonomy, Ecology, Chemistry, Molecular biology,
Pharmacognosy and Environment impact assessment
(xiii) Seeds of the herbarium specimens can be used to resurrect
species extinct in the wild using modern technology
(xiv) It aids in assessment and cataloguing of all species of
economic potential, as commercial species, medicinal herbs, food
plants etc
(xv) It helps in development of computer data base on plants and
maintains active links to international network of systematic
resources and electronic base

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give the importance of herbaria.