Seven years after its official start, the Reflora Project has many stories to tell today. Stories of a successful initiative, considered by Brazilian botanists as a watershed moment, separating a previous era, where the analysis of plant samples required much more time and resources, from a new phase, where the same research can be done with a few clicks on the computer.
The initial plan, established in 2010, to digitize 1 million images has been comfortably surpassed, with the current record of 3 million samples, collected by 27 scholars sent abroad, responsible for this repatriation, and another 130 scholars who operated the photographic stations in Brazil. The number of partner herbaria increased from 3 to 70, with the inclusion of Brazilian and international institutions.
And Natura has been and continues to be alongside the researchers, supporting the initiative so that even more positive outcomes for national botany emerge from it.
The incredible results show how this project, which accelerated and democratized botanical research in Brazil, has leveraged technology to innovate and open the doors of Brazilian biodiversity to a much larger number of people.
Officially, the project began in December 2010, when the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) released its first resources. "Since it started informally, it is older than that," says Rafaela Forzza, a researcher at the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro, the physical headquarters of the Reflora Project. "Historically, we, botanists and taxonomists, who classify Brazilian plants, have always needed to visit European and American herbaria to see samples collected in the 18th and especially in the 19th century. So, the need to consult these collections is quite old in our lives."
With the advancement of technology, collections began to be digitized. Initially, the images were repatriated on paper. The originating herbarium photographed the samples, but the format was not yet digital, and they had to be sent to Brazil via the traditional postal system.
The Reflora program was an initiative of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) conceived from the demand of the scientific community in the field of botany, with the main objective of repatriating specimens of Brazilian flora collected in the 18th, 19th, and part of the 20th century (up to 1970) and deposited in foreign herbaria. The program also has the support of Brazilian funding sources (FNDCT/MCTI, CNPq, CAPES, State Research Support Foundations) and private initiative - in addition to Natura, the Vale Institute and, more recently, the Newton Fund, which have made investments in human resources for research and in information and communication technology infrastructure for the transfer, storage, and online availability of quality data in Brazil.
"Reflora starts when some Brazilian botanists go to CNPq and demonstrate the need for these images, now with technology that allowed large-scale image capture, storage, and processing of this material. All this technological part has improved a lot in the last decade, so CNPq listens, likes the idea, and seeks private initiative to help finance this large project called Reflora."
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro was invited to be the physical headquarters of the virtual herbarium, where the repatriated images from foreign research centers would be managed. Initially, Reflora was born with two international partners, very important herbaria and world references: the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom, and the herbarium of the Natural History Museum of Paris, where many of these samples of Brazilian flora were stored.
"Before the digitization of samples from these museums began, we were very dependent on obtaining resources," says Rafaela. "Especially when you are a student. Imagine that, for a PhD student, it is not easy to visit seven or eight collections, European and American, with limited resources. In other words, everything was much slower. We did our science in a slower way. You dreamed of seeing a plant sample that would take six months, or even a year to access. Today, with a click, you see the sample."
Rafaela recounts that when the virtual herbarium of Reflora was launched, there was already a list of Brazilian species published in 2010, which ended up being added to the new system, making it even more complete, a marriage between the material archived in museums and the report on national biodiversity. Today, the Brazil Flora 2020 project and the Reflora Virtual Herbarium are indispensable tools in the lives of many scientists.
"With these two tools together, we have been able to do much more," says the researcher. "In 2008, if you had asked me how many species we have in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, it would have been impossible to answer succinctly. Today, we have that answer, of course, based on the knowledge accumulated to date, which is still being built."
Reflora is a project that united Brazilian botanists for a common cause, and almost all the work has been done collectively, a legacy that continues seven years after the project's inception. The online platform is collaborative, and botanists have their own access keys with which they can enter, contribute, and improve knowledge about our plants, algae, and fungi. The group of collaborators, from universities and the academic community, encompasses about 800 people.
The success of the project can also be measured by its numbers, although the main legacy, the impact on Brazilian science, is more difficult to quantify.
Today, 70 herbaria are part of the database, a considerable expansion from the initial three partners. Upon learning of the initiative, other national herbaria also became interested and gradually began to integrate into the project. Abroad, herbaria such as the Natural History Museum of Vienna, the Natural History Museum of Stockholm, the New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, and Smithsonian also joined, along with the herbaria of Harvard and Edinburgh, some examples of the scale the project has taken.
With the resources obtained and through partnerships with the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBr) and the National Forest Inventory (IFN), the Reflora team was able to purchase 40 photographic stations to carry out the digitization of the samples. Today, this equipment is shared among Brazilian herbaria. "The project gained a dimension we did not expect at the beginning," says Rafaela.
And Natura was one of those partners that strengthened Reflora and helped the project in its journey of achievements from the very beginning. The company was one of the original partners engaged with the project in 2010, and its support was essential in building the necessary infrastructure for the system to function.
In addition, the company also financed the hiring of teams to specifically carry out the repatriation of the samples found in the Kew herbarium.
"Natura is a national company that values Brazilian biodiversity with products from our flora, seeking a balance between use, benefit sharing, and standing forests," says Rafaela. "Initially, we did not have a structure. You see, we are talking about thousands of high-resolution images that occupy a huge amount of memory, storage, and processing space. This needs to be in a very good structure. Today we have a large data center, which we set up with part of the resources obtained from the private initiative. Officially, the project began in December 2010, when CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) released its first resources. Natura was fundamental in this process."
