---
title: "AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists"
slug: "ai-could-help-win-race-against-extinction-of-vital-plants-say-botanists"
date: 2026-06-16
category: tech-pub
tags: []
language: en
sources_count: 1
featured: false
publisher: AInauten News
url: https://news.ainauten.com/en/story/ai-could-help-win-race-against-extinction-of-vital-plants-say-botanists
---

# AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists

**Published**: 2026-06-16 | **Category**: tech-pub | **Sources**: 1

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## TL;DR

- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.

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## Summary

- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.
- Kew has digitised all 7.4m of its own specimens, while 145m digital herbarium specimens are online globally. The report says that is still under 16% of collections.
- An AI model analysed 8m digitised specimens and found flowering times have shifted by an average 2.5 days per decade, with some regions moving by weeks.
- Old fungi samples are becoming data assets too: researchers can extract high-quality genomes from specimens up to 180 years old, with possible uses in medicine and outbreak prediction.

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## Why it matters

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.

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## Key Points

- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.
- Kew has digitised all 7.4m of its own specimens, while 145m digital herbarium specimens are online globally. The report says that is still under 16% of collections.
- An AI model analysed 8m digitised specimens and found flowering times have shifted by an average 2.5 days per decade, with some regions moving by weeks.
- Old fungi samples are becoming data assets too: researchers can extract high-quality genomes from specimens up to 180 years old, with possible uses in medicine and outbreak prediction.

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## Nauti's Take

This is one of the better AI use cases: no chatbot wrapper, just sorting, comparing and recognising patterns across huge scientific collections. The Kew report is optimistic and has a PR sheen, but the evidence is not vaporware: 7.4m Kew specimens digitised and 8m plant records analysed is real infrastructure. The bottleneck is still fieldwork, curation and local capacity, especially in the global south. Without funding for collections, labs and local teams, AI becomes a fast scanner pointed at an incomplete shelf.

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## FAQ

**Q:** What is AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists about?

**A:** - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.

**Q:** Why does it matter?

**A:** Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.

**Q:** What are the key takeaways?

**A:** Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says AI and digitisation can speed up work on threatened plants and fungi by helping scientists identify, compare and protect species faster.. Kew has digitised all 7.4m of its own specimens, while 145m digital herbarium specimens are online globally. The report says that is still under 16% of collections.. An AI model analysed 8m digitised specimens and found flowering times have shifted by an average 2.5 days per decade, with some regions moving by weeks.

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## Related Topics

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## Sources

- [AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/16/ai-could-help-win-race-against-extinction-of-vital-plants-say-botanists) - The Guardian AI

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## About This Article

This article is a synthesis of 1 sources, curated and summarized by AInauten News. We aggregate AI news from trusted sources and provide bilingual (German/English) coverage.

**Publisher**: [AInauten](https://www.ainauten.com) | **Site**: [news.ainauten.com](https://news.ainauten.com)

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*Last Updated: 2026-06-16*