We work very close to nature and contribute to the drug development program of the institute very significantly by conducting surveys, collecting, authenticating, documenting and distributing the terrestrial and marine biota materials/samples for biological screening. Efforts are being made to strengthen the plant sample processing facility in the division as well as initating some R&D in bioinformatics, . Very recently we have expanded our areas of activities in this division and initiated 1). Digital Herbarium 2). Marine & terrestrial plant bioinformatics facility 3). Plant tissue culture facility, 4.Plant genomic facility. 5. Plant sample collection & processing facility. Efforts are being made to submit research project in each of the areas.

The Digital Herbarium : A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in alcohol or other preservative. The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa; some specimens may be types. In botany a type is that which fixes a name to a taxon

We have a priced collection of world recognized Herbarium on Indian Medicinal Plants, with a name “CDRI Herbarium”.Web reference of the herbarium http://www.biodiversitycollectionsindex.org/collection/view/id/12764. We have initiated the process of digitization, which will help us in minimizing the damage to the herbarium sheets in our collection as well as help us to make the herbarium as a WEB Enabled. Virtual Herbarium for global access. Efforts are being made to design & develop an integrated software system to manage the taxonomic, collection, DNA, DNA sequence and the image data sets related to the herbarium.. At a later stage this database could be linked to the CDRI natural products screening database and folk lore uses database and Compendium database.

Marine & terrestrial plant bioinformatics facility: Bioinformatics in drug development domain can be defined as a scientific discipline which integrates, IT, computer science, statistic, mathematics, bio-physics, chemistry for organizing, storing, retrieving, analyzing, interpreting, predicting biological sciences data for a better understanding of various biological systems and for drug development oriented research & development purposes. Thus Bioinformatics derives knowledge from computer analysis of biological data. These can consist of the information stored in the genetic code, but also experimental results from various sources, patient statistics, and scientific literature. Research in bioinformatics includes method development for storage, retrieval, and analysis of the data. Bioinformatics is a rapidly developing branch of biology and is highly interdisciplinary, using techniques and concepts from informatics, statistics, mathematics, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, and linguistics. It has many practical applications in different areas of biology and medicine. In botany application of bioinformatics can also help in predicting the medicinal values of the respective plants and predict candidate drug, Additionally we can do phylogenetic studies on different taxa.
This facility is being strengthened. When fully equipped, we will be able to predict the medicinal properties of the plants in our herbarium. As of now we have trained 6 M.Tech/MSc Bioinformatics/Biotechnology students under this facility.

The Plant Tissue culture facility is being created to raise tissue culture of plant samples –from rare species/endangered species, or from bark and stem. In future we would like to have a gene bank of medicinal plants of India

The Plant Genomic facility: This facility will provide wet lab inputs to the Bioinformatics facility as well as help in identification & authentication of bioactive constituents. Through the biochemical/functional studies on plant proteins we will be able to provide inputs to drug designing, candidate drugs/ligand for various drug targets as well as inputs to other disciplines in the institute.

The Plant sample collection & processing facility: For temperature controlled drying and grinding of fresh & dry plant material collected from all over the country