Hi all,
There are plenty of people that like to grow ethnobotanicals. Growing the correct ethnobotanical can be tricky however, since poor taxonomy and classification can lead to people growing plants that have little or no ethnobotanical use. This is often result of misidentification from plant and seed vendors and there is usually no secure way to go around this problem.
There are plenty of cases where ethnobotanical plants have inactive look-a-likes. There are plenty of people who are growing false Mimosa hostilis, false Psychotria virisis, or fake San Pedros/Peruvian torches. On the other hand, there are people who would like to ID acacias and various Phalaris grasses. The same goes for difficult-to-distinguish seeds like A.colubrina and A. Peregrina.
How do people go around this problem? Usually the plant/plant material is photographed and published on-line asking other people some help with ID. This is fine, however it cannot always be 100% correct and ambiguity often remains.
There is a way to id ethnobotaincals (without having to try them). It utilises the DNA barcoding technology; in the simplest of the terms, it involves taking a small sample from any part of the plant and sequencing a small piece of DNA from it. Taxonomists are building databases where each plant/animal/fungus etc. can be identified by virtue of a specific DNA sequence that is unique to a certain species but not others. This is very powerful tool and it is considered as the gold standard for identification purposes.
I an proposing to built a facility which will be involved in identification and taxonomic characterisation of plant material. It is going to be analogous to the Ecstasy Pill Database; if anyone is interested in ID-ing a plant, then he/she should send a small sample of the plant to the facility. The plant will be analysed and the taxonomic results will be given back to the person wishing to learn the correct species of his/her plant.
This is very straightforward procedure for molecular biologists to perform. The cost for such an analysis is roughly around £20/$30 for each sample. the cost is also very likely to drop in the future as technology tends to be getting cheaper. I am more than willing to undertake the task. Collaborations with other biologists that have access to labs would also be extremely useful and immensely helpful.
There is however a major problem before the project starts; not all plant species on earth have been "barcoded". The depositories on public databases do not contain barcoding data for all plants. Most notably, from the searches I did, there are no barcoding data for most of the ethnobotanicals. This will require some initial work to establish unique identifiers for the plants of interest. A major first goal of the project would therefore be to establish the standards (i.e. sequences that are unique to the plants of interest) against which all the samples analysed will be compared to. To resolve this gap, samples of true, tested, and correctly identified plants need to be donated and analysed to establish those standards.
But all these are perfectly doable. It should take me no more that 2 years to organise the facility (I am not currently in the position to have total freedom in the lab I work but this is just a matter of time to accomplish) and it will also take from 2 months to 1 year to "build" the standards database under which all future plant samples sent and analysed will be compared against.
What are your thoughts on this idea? Given that most of the funding for such project will be coming either from donations and/or from the people who wish to ID their samples, money would not be a problem.
There are plenty of people that like to grow ethnobotanicals. Growing the correct ethnobotanical can be tricky however, since poor taxonomy and classification can lead to people growing plants that have little or no ethnobotanical use. This is often result of misidentification from plant and seed vendors and there is usually no secure way to go around this problem.
There are plenty of cases where ethnobotanical plants have inactive look-a-likes. There are plenty of people who are growing false Mimosa hostilis, false Psychotria virisis, or fake San Pedros/Peruvian torches. On the other hand, there are people who would like to ID acacias and various Phalaris grasses. The same goes for difficult-to-distinguish seeds like A.colubrina and A. Peregrina.
How do people go around this problem? Usually the plant/plant material is photographed and published on-line asking other people some help with ID. This is fine, however it cannot always be 100% correct and ambiguity often remains.
There is a way to id ethnobotaincals (without having to try them). It utilises the DNA barcoding technology; in the simplest of the terms, it involves taking a small sample from any part of the plant and sequencing a small piece of DNA from it. Taxonomists are building databases where each plant/animal/fungus etc. can be identified by virtue of a specific DNA sequence that is unique to a certain species but not others. This is very powerful tool and it is considered as the gold standard for identification purposes.
I an proposing to built a facility which will be involved in identification and taxonomic characterisation of plant material. It is going to be analogous to the Ecstasy Pill Database; if anyone is interested in ID-ing a plant, then he/she should send a small sample of the plant to the facility. The plant will be analysed and the taxonomic results will be given back to the person wishing to learn the correct species of his/her plant.
This is very straightforward procedure for molecular biologists to perform. The cost for such an analysis is roughly around £20/$30 for each sample. the cost is also very likely to drop in the future as technology tends to be getting cheaper. I am more than willing to undertake the task. Collaborations with other biologists that have access to labs would also be extremely useful and immensely helpful.
There is however a major problem before the project starts; not all plant species on earth have been "barcoded". The depositories on public databases do not contain barcoding data for all plants. Most notably, from the searches I did, there are no barcoding data for most of the ethnobotanicals. This will require some initial work to establish unique identifiers for the plants of interest. A major first goal of the project would therefore be to establish the standards (i.e. sequences that are unique to the plants of interest) against which all the samples analysed will be compared to. To resolve this gap, samples of true, tested, and correctly identified plants need to be donated and analysed to establish those standards.
But all these are perfectly doable. It should take me no more that 2 years to organise the facility (I am not currently in the position to have total freedom in the lab I work but this is just a matter of time to accomplish) and it will also take from 2 months to 1 year to "build" the standards database under which all future plant samples sent and analysed will be compared against.
What are your thoughts on this idea? Given that most of the funding for such project will be coming either from donations and/or from the people who wish to ID their samples, money would not be a problem.
