Mushrooms Flora of Nepal at Natural History Museum

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Digitization has been a fast-growing process mostly in academic institutions for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. In the global north, collections deposited in the libraries, natural history museums, and herbaria have been more or less digitized than in the global south. Therefore, for the conservation of the biological diversity and associated knowledge, documentation, digitization and analysis of the specimens of the global south are crucial. Mushroom in the other hand is already the understudied and underprivileged group and demands further research and extension. This digitization project aims to fulfil that gap and contribute to the records of GBIF by digitizing mushrooms herbarium collections deposited in different herbaria in Nepal. The data produced after digitization will serve as the foundation of mycological knowledge of Nepal quantifying their availability at different deposition centres with every ancillary detail. Digitization of available fungi is also important for the mycologists working at different institutions to understand their ecology, distribution, phenology and possible multidisciplinary research plans; high school and university students to share and understand about such fungal groups; mycophilic communities around to understand and share their knowledge and importantly for the building interest on mushrooms. Furthermore, as Nepal is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, existing knowledge on mushrooms is crucial to understand the impacts of climate change on the less explored taxonomic group.

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