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Scientists at Kew Gardens are launching an annual "health check" of the world's plants to examine issues including wildlife loss, disease and invasive species.
Plans for the "state of the world's plants" assessment, which will see its first results published in December, have been announced by the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG), Kew, as part of its new science strategy.
Kew will also be putting all the information it holds about the world's known plant species online by 2020, working to identify the most species-rich but highly threatened tropical forests in the world and collecting and preserving 15% of the world's wild plant species by the end of the decade.
RBG Kew is also starting a new Masters course to train students in taxonomy, the science of classifying biological organisms, and holding a children's plant science festival as part of its new strategy.
The first annual plant health check will track issues such as invasive species, species loss, plant disease hotspots and changes in land use across the world.
The strategy will also continue to focus on useful plants and fungi, with projects including helping the Ethiopian government develop a climate resilient coffee industry, and examining the chemistry of plants to search for naturally occurring pesticides.
Launching the new strategy, Professor Kathy Willis, director of science at RBG Kew said: "With this strategy we are focusing Kew's science in those areas where we can truly make a unique impact on people's lives, thanks to our unrivalled collection of specimens and the world-leading expertise of our evolutionary botanists, mycologists, taxonomists and systematists.
"Our core purpose at Kew stems from a simple but often overlooked truth: that all of our lives depend on plants and fungi.
"Given the scale of the challenges we face, Kew absolutely has a responsibility to take a leading role in building momentum around the importance and relevance of botany and taxonomy in the minds of the public and decision makers.
"This strategy will ensure that we are able to do just this: our science will be accessible, inspirational and will clearly demonstrate the value of plant and fungal science to all of our lives."
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