AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists
TL;DR
A new Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew report says AI and digitisation could become a turning point for botanists trying to identify and protect vital plants before they disappear. Digitised herbarium collections are making millions of archived specimens accessible online, creating new research opportunities, especially for scientists in the global south. The report says AI can help track flowering shifts by weeks worldwide, identify new specimens faster, and recover genetic data from 180-year-old fungus samples.
Nauti's Take
The hype is not the real story here for once. The interesting part is that AI can turn dusty collections into usable infrastructure: flowering dates, locations, old fungus samples, genetic clues.
But technology does not win conservation races by itself. Without open data, local research teams, and money for protection work, the 'genomic goldmine' risks staying a polished phrase in a press release.
Briefingshow
Botany has a timing problem: species are disappearing faster than researchers can describe, map, and protect them. If AI can turn old collections into searchable evidence and detect patterns across millions of specimens, archive work becomes an early-warning system. The real test is whether these tools reach regions with the richest biodiversity and the thinnest research capacity.
Sources