K. N. Ganeshaiah and R. Uma Shaanker, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore
E-mail: kng@vsnl.com

We have learnt, at a heavy cost though, that civilizations, empires and cultures could emerge and grow, or, could decline and collapse, depending on how they use or abuse biological resources. It is now well established that the ecological disaster on the tiny Polynesian Easter Island, which resulted in the collapse of its civilization within a few centuries of its occupation, was due to the over exploitation of the palm tree Jubelia sps (used as rollers to move huge stone statues!). As the palm species (now extinct) disappeared from the island they could not prepare the sailing boats for hunting dolphins; consequently they turned to hunt birds, lizards and frogs on their island driving some of these species also to extinction. Having locked themselves in to the island and, having overexploited the resources, they fought among themselves for the remaining limited food, and eventually killed each other pushing themselves to almost extinction. Similarly, it has been recently argued that the emergence and growth of the Vijayanagara empire in South India, the second richest empire in recent history (14th to 16th century) after Rome, could be attributed to the way they capitalized on their most important bioresources viz., sandalwood and spices (along with diamonds) to trade for horses and guns.

That biological and other natural resources could play an important role in building stability and strength of a country has been known to Indians since a long time; Kautilya's (Chanakya) Arthashastra (~ 300 BC) exhorts the ruler to have a clear knowledge of the availability and distribution of important bioresources in their kingdom. Not surprisingly, in India, there has been a long history of documentation of bioresources of the country.

There are three, not so distinct but discernible, phases in the documentation of Indian bioresources. The first refers to the early historic period spanning 1st to 4th century when Dhanvanthari, Charaka (2nd Century) and Sushrutha (4th century), documented the use of plants for treating various human diseases. The second corresponds to colonial British period (from 16th to 19th century) when a soldier turned botanist Van Rheede (1678-1693), a surgeon turned naturalist Buchannan (1763-1829) and their like, documented Indian floral resources with their traditional uses. Surprisingly, even though the process of documenting the taxonomy and biodiversity of Indian flora and fauna was actively taken up during the last century, there were no systematic and sustained attempt to catalogue the bioresources of the country apart from the only visible effort of developing the Wealth of India. Clearly, the third phase of documenting bioresources of India began seriously in recent years, a distinct feature being a shift from mere textual documentation to digital formats.

Recent developments in the in the field of IT, availability of requisite software expertise and the convergence of interests among biologists and government agencies have combined together to provide a clear platform to develop digital databases of bioresources.