SilvaGRIS Global Information System on Forest Genetic Resources: taxonomic standardization of 2,794 species to World Flora Online or the World Checklist of Vascular Plants

SilvaGRIS (https://fgr.apps.fao.org/en; accessed 28^th March 2025) is a new global information system on forest genetic resources that makes available the data countries report to FAO for monitoring the implementation of the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources and for preparing global assessments on these resources. The first dataset was provided by 77 countries, which reported more than 2,800 species for the preparation of The Second Report on the State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources.

Here I provide a dataset where these species were standardized to World Flora Online (Borsch et al. 2020; taxonomic backbone version 2023.12) by matching names with those in the Agroforestry Species Switchboard (Kindt et al. 2025; version 4). Species for which no matches could be found were standardized with the WorldFlora package (Kindt 2020), using similar R scripts and the same taxonomic backbone data as those used to standardize species names for the Switchboard. Twelve hybrid species such as Acacia mangium x auriculiformis could not be matched with taxa in the taxonomic backbone databases.

Additional fields indicate whether a species can be classified as a tree (2509 species), shrub (156), tree or shrub (6), tree-like palm (57), bamboo (16), rattan (6), or other categories that included rosette trees (16) and tree ferns (3). The category was inferred from the species being flagged as a tree in the Switchboard, from the lifeform obtained from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP; Govaerts et al. 2021, version 11), or from other specified information sources in case there were insufficient details available from the Switchboard or the WCVP.

There are also additional fields to indicate that the species was included in the Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges database (TreeGOER; Kindt 2023) or in the TreeGOER+ database (Kindt 2024; this databases includes bamboo, hybrid and other woody tree species not included in TreeGOER).

References

• FAO. 2025. SilvaGRIS - Global Information System on Forest Genetic Resources. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. URL https://fgr.apps.fao.org/en accessed 28-MAR-2025
• Borsch, T., Berendsohn, W., Dalcin, E., Delmas, M., Demissew, S., Elliott, A., Fritsch, P., Fuchs, A., Geltman, D., Güner, A., Haevermans, T., Knapp, S., le Roux, M.M., Loizeau, P.-A., Miller, C., Miller, J., Miller, J.T., Palese, R., Paton, A., Parnell, J., Pendry, C., Qin, H.-N., Sosa, V., Sosef, M., von Raab-Straube, E., Ranwashe, F., Raz, L., Salimov, R., Smets, E., Thiers, B., Thomas, W., Tulig, M., Ulate, W., Ung, V., Watson, M., Jackson, P.W. and Zamora, N. (2020), World Flora Online: Placing taxonomists at the heart of a definitive and comprehensive global resource on the world's plants. TAXON, 69: 1311-1341. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12373
• Roeland Kindt, Ilyas Siddique, Ian Dawson, Innocent John, Fabio Pedercini, Jens-Peter B. Lilleso, Lars Graudal. 2025. The Agroforestry Species Switchboard, a global resource to explore information for 107,269 plant species. bioRxiv 2025.03.09.642182; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.09.642182 
• Govaerts, R., Nic Lughadha, E., Black, N. et al. The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity. Sci Data 8, 215 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6
• Kindt, R. 2020. WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online taxonomic backbone data. Applications in Plant Sciences 8(9): e11388. https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11388
• Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 29, 6303–6318. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16914
• Kindt, R. (2024). TreeGOER 2024 Expansion: Expansion with additional tree and bamboo species identified via the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (2024.06) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11652972

Funding

The development of this dataset was supported by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa, by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, and by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project.