SANBI BODATSA (Botanical Database of Southern Africa) / BRAHMS Online

Overview

The Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA), accessible online through the BRAHMS Online platform and published via SANBI's Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), is the authoritative digital repository of plant occurrence and taxonomic data for southern Africa. Managed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), BODATSA integrates specimen data from SANBI's three herbaria and botanical garden collections, providing a single comprehensive resource for researchers, conservationists, and policymakers working with South African flora.

History and Development

The foundation of BODATSA extends to the 1970s, when the Botanical Research Institute (now SANBI) pioneered one of Africa's first herbarium digitization efforts with the PRE Computerised Information System (PRECIS). In 2013, SANBI adopted the Botanical Research and Herbarium Management System (BRAHMS), a software platform developed by the BRAHMS project at the University of Oxford Innovation, and migrated the PRECIS data into what became the BODATSA database. The BRAHMS Online public interface was subsequently developed to make this data freely available to the wider research community. BODATSA is registered with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) under UUID d0963cee-1a29-47a2-b9bf-fb0e7690077c.

Collections and Holdings

BODATSA contains over 1,342,991 occurrence records drawing on specimen data from the National Herbarium in Pretoria (PRE), the Compton Herbarium in Cape Town (NBG and SAM), and the KwaZulu-Natal Herbarium in Durban (NH). The database covers plant names (taxa), herbarium specimens, and field observations recorded over more than 200 years of botanical collection. It also forms the backbone of the South African National Plant Checklist, which currently includes more than 23,000 taxa. BODATSA serves as the data source for the e-Flora of South Africa and the SANBI Biodiversity Advisor platform.

Access and Usage

BODATSA data is freely accessible through the BRAHMS Online platform (posa.sanbi.org) and as a Darwin Core Archive via SANBI's IPT. Data is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License. Researchers using the dataset are asked to cite it as: South African National Biodiversity Institute. 2022. BODATSA: Botanical Collections. Version 1.1.