THE VIRTUAL IAN HERBARY OF EMBRAPA AMAZÔNIA ORIENTAL Helena Joseane Raiol Souza, Silvane Tavares Rodrigues, Sebastião Ribeiro Xavier Júnior, Fernanda Ilkiu Borges de Souza

Abstract

The Herbarium of the Northern Agronomic Institute, internationally indexed with the acronym IAN, was founded in 1945 by researchers João Murça Pires and William Archer and is currently under the control of Embrapa Amazônia Oriental. It is a regional herbarium, covering collections of famous botanists such as Ricardo de Lemos Fróes, João Murça Pires, Normélia Vasconcelos, Adolpho Ducke, Paulo Cavalcante and George Black. Currently, the IAN Herbarium collection contains 194 thousand specimens of dehydrated plants and samples of wood, fruits, flowers, seeds and seedlings are associated with them. With the purpose of optimizing the work carried out in the existing collections at the herbarium and so that their results could reach the scientific society, the possibility of making the IAN Database available via the Internet was envisaged. To this end, the IAN Virtual Herbarium was created, which has approximately 10% of its main collection already available on the Internet, with the data and images of the exsiccates rigorously verified. Images of the field, fruits, seeds and macro and microscopic sections of wood are also available, promoting the link with the Xyloteca and Associated Collections of the Botany Laboratory. Therefore, the IAN Virtual Herbarium provides information online, so that the user can carry out their research quickly, since the majority of answers can be obtained by consulting the information and images supporting taxonomic, ecological, phytogeographic, ethnobotanical, pharmacological, phytochemical, management, among others.