S'pore to have S-E Asia's largest digital plant database around 2027

It will feature 800,000 plant specimens and be accessible to people around the world

- Ariel Yu

A Singapore-based digital database of 800,000 plants from Southeast Asia and elsewhere will be ready by around 2027 for researchers, students and plant enthusiasts across the world to study and access.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens will be building the database on top of its current digital collection of around 10,000 local specimens, which is called the Singapore Herbarium Online.

Work on the wider database is slated to begin in early 2025 and conclude around two years after that. The 800,000 specimens come from regions including South-east Asia, New Guinea, East Asia and the South-west Pacific.

The database will be the largest of its kind in South-east Asia to date and people from around the world can access it.

The initiative was announced on Aug 6 at the 8th Global Botanic Gardens Congress, which is held for the first time in South-east Asia.

"Not only will the integrated database make it easier for researchers to undertake botanical studies, but (it will) also help preserve botanical history, and facilitate global knowledge sharing and collaborations," said Mr Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information as well as National Development. He spoke on Aug 6 at the opening ceremony of the congress.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens Herbarium currently houses the 800,000 preserved plant specimens. In 2003 and 2013, the herbarium digitised about 10,000 of these type specimens.