Pl@ntNet : Plant Computational Identification and Collaborative Information System

Abstract

Accurate knowledge of the identity, geographic distribution and uses of plants underpins the success of agriculture and biodiversity conservation. Because their floras are still badly described and documented, most Mediterranean and tropical countries are facing a major impediment towards sustainable development. It is thus of the utmost importance to speed up the accumulation of basic data on plants, while simultaneously providing to potential users an easy and efficient access to this knowledge.

The Pl@ntNet project will contribute to this objective by providing, within a coherent platform, free, open-source, easy-access software tools and methods for plant identification and for the collection, management, share and exploitation of potentially all kind of data on plants. It will deeply involve citizen science, as a powerful mean to enrich databases with informations on plant location, phenology, ecology or uses, thus compensating for the current lack of professional botanists.

These tools, partly based on well tried, or prototype softwares (e.g. http://umramap.cirad.fr/amap2/logiciels_amap/index.php ?page=plantnote), will be proposed for individual as well as for collective use, to all potential users (from general public to amateur or professional taxonomists, from farmers to agronomists and biodiversity managers). Plant identification systems will include not only existing, morphological recognition systems (http://umramap.cirad.fr/amap2/logiciels_amap/index.php ?page=idao), but also more experimental, yet potentially powerful content-based image retrieval methods (http://www-rocq.inria.fr/imedia/).

Pl@ntNet is the first flagship project of Agropolis foundation, and intends to complement other international initiatives on plant biodiversity and taxonomy.

Speaker

Dr. Philippe Birnbaum, UMR AMAP, Montpellier

Organisers

Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry.

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001.

Time

4.30 pm