Plant taxonomic keys repository

Biologists have huge collections of voucher herbarium specimens. The information collected from the voucher is used to produce plant taxonomic keys for species identification. Most biologists keep the plant taxonomic keys information in separate databases. Each database stores the taxonomic keys for one plant family. The information is then extracted and presented in a visual form, manually. However, due to the unstructured databases, it is difficult to retrieve the required information efficiently. We propose a plant taxonomic keys repository to overcome the above mentioned problem. Hierarchical object-based model is used to design the repository. The plant taxonomic keys obtained from the disparate standalone databases are then transferred into the repository. The plant taxonomic keys repository is able to overcome the limitations of the existing plant identification systems, which include better performance in the retrieval, visualization, and identification of plant species.