The herbarium of cultivated plants at ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, also known as National Herbarium of Cultivated Plants (code ‘NHCP’) occupies an important place among 25 major Indian herbaria (Singh, 2010). NHCP is listed in the Index Herbarium which is a global directory of public herbaria in different regions (Holmgren and Holmgren, 1998; http://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/ih/ ). It holds significant collections mainly of cultivated taxa and wild relatives of crop plants/ weedy relatives of both native and exotic origin and taxa of potential value in PGR programme. Besides, seed and carpological samples/ economic products of plant genetic resources (PGR) relevance serve as complementary collection. NHCP is intended to serve as a reference collection for identification, taxonomic study and for teaching. It differs in its mandate from the general herbaria across the country in representing a wide range of variability in crop plants depicted as captives, primitive types/ laundress, wild/semi-domesticated forms and crop wild relatives. (CWR)/ Weedy types and also the potential species collected from different agro-ecological regions of India under various PGR programme. In addition herbarium specimens of exotic taxa introduced under various research programme, local flora of Delhi, weed flora, voucher species of various research are represented.
The gateway into the National Herbarium depicts a map layout of the different sections in the NHCP, ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi. The users are desired to contact the In-Charge for entry.
A processing room is used for handling new material intended to be added to the NHCP; deep freezing (-20 degrees for 72 hours) treatment, routine poisoning, salvaging, and disinfecting the herbarium material are routinely practiced to disinfect the new material.
Herbarium gallery provides an overall glance of the material and displayed items in the form variability charts, economic products, bulky herbarium (wet collections) meant for visitors, teaching programmes, etc.
ICAR-NBPGR has a very good collection of literature on taxonomy and systematics studies of Indian taxa. Over 200 books on biosystematics, monographs and country/state floras and literature on taxonomy are housed in the main library of the gene bank building.
System of arranging herbarium specimens differs from that of the other herbaria; the specimens are arranged as families, genera and then by species; all in an alphabetical order.
During the earlier history of this herbarium the archival collections available as grasses collected during PL-48, relevant heritages, literature published by previous workers is available as digital images, scans, etc.