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

Botanists from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, suggest that the rise of AI and digitisation could be a crucial turning point in the effort to save vital plants from extinction. New technology is helping scientists identify new specimens rapidly, track shifts in flowering times globally, and extract genetic data from old specimens, potentially creating a "genomic goldmine" of fungi data. The digitisation and online accessibility of millions of specimens, previously confined to archives, are also generating new insights, particularly benefiting the global south. This advancement is significant as it provides powerful tools in the urgent race against plant extinction.