Plants constitute nearly 80% of the planet's total biomass (Bar-On et al., 2018); however, this vital group is experiencing severe threats, and recent evaluations indicate that approximately 45% of the world's described plant species are at risk of extinction (Bachman et al., 2024). The number of plant extinctions has increased by 60% in the last 100 years (Di Marco et al., 2017). Over the past 250 years, 571 plant species have gone extinct—more than twice the combined total of extinct birds, mammals, and amphibians (217 species) (Briggs, 2019). Endemic plant species are the most affected ones; almost 46–62% of the world's flora is endemic to a single country (Pitman and Jørgensen, 2002). Floral biodiversity is unevenly distributed, and conservation outcomes depend on regional/national policies also (Myers et al., 2000). In developing countries such as India, limited scientific capacity and inadequate funding hinder comprehensive species assessments and effective conservation initiatives (Jose, 2025).

India is recognised as one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries and contains four of the 36 global biodiversity hotspots. Although it occupies only 2.4% of the planet's land area, the country harbours nearly 8% of global plant diversity, with approximately 28% of its flora being endemic (BSI, 2025). Out of ~55, 726 recorded plant species in India, only around 6.33% have been assessed for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List (BSI, 2025). The low percentage (~6.3%) of plant species assessed for extinction risk indicates a significant gap in documentation for plant conservation, particularly in relation to the scale of diversity (Appendix A). Plant conservation in India remains largely neglected and underfunded, with available conservation resources primarily directed toward more charismatic animal species (Jose, 2024).

Recently, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India, introduced the National Red List Assessment (NRLA) initiative during the IUCN World Conservation Congress (IUCN, 2025) held in Abu Dhabi in October 2025. The main objective of NRLA is to formulate a National Red List of threatened species that aligns with the assessment standards of the IUCN Red List. The project aims to evaluate the extinction risk of approximately 7000 plant species by 2030, helping to meet India's commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM–GBF) (BSI, 2025). The initiative is led by the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) as the primary coordinating agency, in collaboration with IUCN India and the Centre for Species Survival (CSS). Several Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and China, have previously conducted similar conservation assessment programs.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) underscores the importance of conducting comprehensive species assessments as a means to mitigate biodiversity loss (CBD, 2012). Therefore, the NRLA initiative is a significant step in India for assessing plant species and conservation efforts. As part of this NRLA, researchers will be trained on the IUCN red listing. There is a pressing need to strengthen Red List assessment training for researchers in India, as several species have been inaccurately evaluated by existing assessors. For instance, Humboldtia bourdillonii Prain—although represented by fewer than 100 mature individuals and qualifying as Critically Endangered—is currently misclassified as Vulnerable (Fig. 1).

There are still many gaps and disparities in India's plant conservation efforts. Non-forest biomes, such as grasslands and scrublands, remain largely underrepresented in current assessments and conservation initiatives, despite supporting a high diversity of endemic and threatened plant species (Lahiri and Reddy, 2025). Recent research reports that Indian grasslands alone supports 206 endemic plant species, of which many are threatened (Nerlekar et al., 2022). Genomics is underutilised in species assessments and plant conservation efforts in India. Genetic data is crucial for conservation efforts and has practical applications (Garner et al., 2020). There is a need to integrate genomics in the country's plant conservation initiatives. There is also a need to strengthen the capacity of Indian researchers through enhanced international collaboration and training initiatives (Jose, 2025).

Acknowledgements

We are thankful for the support of the ORG.one project of Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT), the Rufford Grants (45249-1), the Idea Wild Grants (Project ID- KJOSINDI0125-00), and the Mohamed Bin Zyed Species Conservation (MBZ) (GEF Grant no- 240535253) Funds in our efforts to conserve threatened trees in the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot Forest regions. We are also grateful to the forest departments of Kerala and Karnataka for granting the necessary permissions for our fieldwork in the forests.

Author contribution

Jithu K. Jose – Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Validation; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing.

Data availability statement

Data available on reasonable request.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2025.11.007.