Staff Reporter The former vice chancellor University of Karachi and the author of the Flora of Pakistan, Professor Dr Muhammad Qaiser on Monday announced that the project ‘Flora of Pakistan’ has been completed and it is a matter of great pride not only for the University of Karachi but for the whole country. He termed that it was without any doubt a landmark achievement and indeed it was an uphill task to accomplish. He said that it is a book dealing with the plants of a defined geographical area. “The principal objective of a Flora is to provide means of identification to the plants growing in the area. The Almighty Allah has given unlimited biological wealth to Pakistan. We have a very rich Flora, to utilize this plant wealth properly and scientifically the plants should be correctly identified.” Dr Qaiser was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the four-day long International Symposium on Plantlife of South Asia, on the successful completion of Flora of Pakistan, at the Jinnah Auditorium situated at the Dr A Q Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, University of Karachi. The Center of Plant Conservation and the Department of Botany Karachi University has jointly organized the event, while local and international scholars from eight different countries are participating in the symposium. Professor Dr Muhammad Qaiser mentioned that if the plants are not correctly identified their utility is limited. Flora provides baseline information. This information can be utilized for scientific study, in industries such as the pharmaceutical industry, agriculture environment management, forestry, and others. He informed the audience that the project of Flora of Pakistan was jointly started under PL-480 program, USDA in 1967 at Department of Botany University of Karachi and Gordon College Rawalpindi, which were awarded the project of writing Flora of Pakistan because at that time both the centers had the best taxonomists in the country.
