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KU set to complete 35-year research on flora
KARACHI, Nov 26, 2007: The 215th and last volume of a research project titled
The Flora of Pakistan, initiated 35 years ago to record the scientific details
of all the indigenous flowering plant species of the country, is being finalised
by senior professors at the University of Karachi's botany department. The
study, the most comprehensive and authentic scientific work ever on Pakistan's
flora, would be completed next year.
Dr Mohammad Qaiser, the in-charge of
the KU's herbarium and adviser to the vice-chancellor, told this in an
interview.
Of the total 6,000 flowering species in Pakistan, information
about 4,900 species has been recorded, Dr Qaiser said, adding that 90 per cent
of the work of the series' last publication has been completed.
"All over
the world plant conservation has assumed a lot of significance in recent years
due to increasing biodiversity loss. Every living organism has a role to play in
nature and its loss can translate into a bigger threat to the environment. To
tackle the issue, we need complete information about an organism and the correct
identification of a specimen is the first and most vital step that forms the
basis of research", Dr Qaiser said while elaborating upon the significance of
plant research and conservation.
Initially christened the Flora of West
Pakistan, the project, funded by the US department of agriculture, was launched
in 1968/69 in two institutions, Gordon College Rawalpindi and the University of
Karachi simultaneously. The then chairman of the KU's botany department,
Professor Dr Syed Irtafaq Ali, who is still one of the chief editors of the
publication, and Mr E. Nasir, a botany teacher at Gordon College, were the
premier researchers who, with the help of other staff, collected the initial
data.
Starting from scratch
"Unlike the Indians, who had
the entire infrastructure and literature available with a large collection of
species all left intact by the British, we started from scratch. Gordon College
Principal Dr R. Stewart's collections that comprised species mostly of the
Northern Areas were the only work available for guidance", Dr Qaiser
said.
Gordon College's contribution, however, ended with the death of Mr
E. Nasir after 17 years and the project, which was renamed after the fall of
Dhaka as The Flora of Pakistan, was solely looked after by KU, which was
supported by the Missouri Botanical Gardens once the agreement with the US
department of agriculture ended.
The KU's botany department, which had
only 1,000 specimens at the time of its establishment in the 1950s, now boasts
of 150,000 specimens of flowering and non-flowering plants, the largest
collection of dry plant specimens at any university in the country.
Of
them 300 are type specimens, which means they were named for the first time in
the world by the KU team. The collection includes some very old specimens of the
19th century, many gifted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the British
Museum. The rest were either acquired in exchange or brought on loan to be
returned later after study.
Besides KU, there are three major
institutions that have herbaria; the National Herbarium PARC, Quaid-i-Azam
University and the Pakistan Museum of Natural History, all in Islamabad. The
other educational institutions located in Peshawar, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas,
Lahore, Faisalabad and Quetta have quite small collections.
Local
expertise
About the unique aspects of The Flora of Pakistan, Dr
Qaiser asserted that the work has mostly been done by locals while in most
neighbouring countries, the major research and editing in recording the flora is
done by foreign experts. For instance research on Sri Lanka's flora is written
by Americans, Iran's by Austrians, Turkey's by Scots, Saudi Arabia's by mostly
Pakistanis and Iraq's by an English team of the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew.
"Our work is more advanced and critical and the study is considered
as one of the most authentic in the scientific world. It's superior in quality
and content even to the Indian research that has been found to be plagued with
mistakes despite having a vast collection and literature of the British period,
50 herbaria with 500 staff, two permanent staff at Kew Gardens as well as an
entire body, the Plant Survey of India, working for decades", he
said.
About the plant details being recorded in the latest volume, Dr
Qaiser said that it contained information about the habitat, characteristics,
distribution, local names, identification of threatened species, chemical and
medicinal properties, besides the scientific names of flowering
plants.
At the moment, research is being carried out in Thar, Chitral,
the Northern Areas as well as in Sindh and Balochistan. The project team
includes Dr Sultanul Abedin, Dr Y. Nasir, Dr Rubina Abid, Dr Surriya Khatoon, Dr
Anjum Parveen, Dr S.M.H. Jafri, Abdul Ghafoor, Jan Alam, Sherwali and Zumrud
Tajuddin. Dawn
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