The Government of India recently launched a national bioresource website - Indian Bioresource Information Network


Here is the Welcome message from their website...

Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, launched a national level programme to develop a digital database of the bioresource of the country. IBIN is uniquely placed as a single portal data provider on India's bioresource - plant, animal, marine, spatial data and microbial resources . The data sets collated here are the result of the research of over four hundred scientists, working in over 150 institutions for the first time ever, an electronic database was developed using an indigenously developed software application for data access and query on spatial data , plant, animal, marine and microbial resources of the country. All the digital databases were developed with a common basic structure such that they could all be eventually compiled on to a single servicing plot form. There arose a need to offer these Non-spatial data (attribute data) sets on a wide network such that they become available to all the potential end users.

India with unique floristic and faunal richness, their vastness, endemism, heterogeneity and also inaccessibility of large areas has necessitated creation of authentic baseline data on biodiversity. Indian Bioresource Information Network (IBIN) is being developed as a distributed national infrastructure intended to serve relevant information on diverse range of issues of bioresources of the country to a range of end users. Its major goal is to network and promote an open ended, co-evolutionary growth among all the digital databases related to biological resources of the country and to add value to the databases by integration. Indian Bioresource Information Network (IBIN) is designed to serve relevant information on bioresources of the country to professionals involved in bio-prospecting, marketing, protecting bio-piracy and the conservation of bioresources. Thus the network would be a valuable asset for the countrys research scientists, bio-resource managers, policy makers, common man, and entrepreneurs and hence is being developed as a one window for information on bioresources of the country.