C V RAMAN LABORATORY OF ECOLOGICAL INFORMATICS

 


2007: Two roads diverged into the woods. I took the less travelled one to initiate Ecological Informatics
in Indian sub-continent.

Genesis

2007:Two roads diverged into the woods. I took the less travelled one to initiate Ecological Informatics in Indian sub-continent.

Since 2015 we were on a strange course of research. It involved measurement of floral spectral reflectance and its assay. Hand-held spectroradiometer borrowed from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Trivandrum was used for extensive field campaigns in and around Trivandrum. Today we have with us floral spectral reflectance (from 300nanometers to 2400 nanometers) of more than 129 plants. It led us into the domain of color science and its applications in ecological research..

Floral spectral reflectance based studies are well reported from the developed world. However we were surprised that it was totally overlooked in India by ecologists, botanists and remote sensing scientists. We stumbled on it..

Our excitement got greater when we discovered that during 1960s Sir C.V. Raman had stated multiple times that floral spectral measurements can yield more information than studies made by light transmission (spectroscopy). For 50 years this remained buried to be brought out by IIITM-K.

In 2016, we introduced the term Floral Radiometry to represent the branch of ecological research that studies floral reflectance. The name of our laboratory is an ode to the Nobel laureate.

C V Raman Laboratory of Ecological Informatics at IIITM-K has secured a niche for itself. We have introduced studies of floral reflectance in India (& S. Asia) and coined the term 'Floral Radiometry' to denote reflection based studies of flowers. http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/11/18/088583

Floral Radiometry

Flowers are Bill boards that plants use to attract pollinators. Floral coloration is the result of combined effect of light scattering by irregularcell complexes and wavelength selective absorbing pigments. Incoherently scattered light in the complementary wavelength determines the color of petals....


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Floral Spectra

Using an ASD field spectrometer the reflectance spectrum from 350 nm to 1000 nm wavelength was measured and compared. Spectral reflectance values of invasive flower are statistically more significant than native flower, which means that it would attract more pollinators than the native flowers, thereby contributing to an increase in the number of invasive plants.

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