Georeferenced Plant Pathology Digital Herbarium – An Alternate Approach

Preservation and conservation of pant specimens in the form of herbarium is difficult challenges to plant biologists. In this digital era pictorial representation of plant specimens is gaining more values than the very old herbarium method of plant preservation. We have adopted an innovative method of pictorial representation of plant pathological specimen in the form of a digital storage. This method was followed by doing a pathological survey of an endangered, endemic, rare, threatened and vulnerable species of plant specimens which were highly infected by plant pathogens. For the survey purpose we have selected Alagar hills of Madurai, some selected areas in Madurai and Kodaikanal hills of Dindigul districts of Tamil Nadu, India. Usage of digital camera and high resolution mobile devices 25 specimens from Alagar hills and 15 plant pathological specimens from selected areas of Kodaikanal were picturized. These photos were stored in digital database of our department. The Along with plant pathological photos, we have a data of geographical positioning system (GPS) which clearly indicates the latitude and longitude of collected specimens. The GPS information were also updated in the digital plant pathological herbarium.