Kolkata: In a bid to make a virtual tour of the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden spread over 273 acres of land possible, the garden authorities are soon going to introduce a mobile
phone App that will be helpful for both common visitors and researchers as
well.
The introduction of the App comes crucial at this critical time of COVID-19 when entry to the garden is restricted. There are more than 15,000 trees of around 1,400 species in the garden.
It includes many trees of rare species. People from different parts of the world visit the garden every year not only just to get a glimpse of the century old trees including the Great Banyan Tree but also to carry out a detailed study on the same.
Basant Kumar Singh, Botanical Assistant of the garden, said: "The App is ready and it will be launched soon."
Details about each tree is available on the "information board" installed in front of the same.
But one needs to reach the spot where the tree is situated and it is time consuming to find out a
particular tree in the garden spread over 273 acres of
land.
The App has the GPS enabled features using which the shortest route to a particular tree will appear on the screen of the cell phone once the name of the tree is keyed in for an easy search. It will be helpful once the garden reopens after remaining closed in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak.
"But the App also ensures a virtual tour that is helpful if one cannot visit the place physically. It will contain details of each and every tree in the garden along with their photographs. It will be very much helpful for researchers to undertake their work without visiting the garden," he said.