The Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney is embarking on a four-year program to genetically map native plants in NSW that it says will revolutionise land restoration.
The project, dubbed Restore & Renew, will sequence the genetic data of the 200 most commonly used species in land regeneration from more than 5000 sites across NSW.
In what it says is a world first, the Botanic Garden team will build an interactive map of plant genetic diversity using its own information and distribution data from the Atlas of Living Australia.
Project director Maurizio Rossetto said this will allow for targeted planting of species for optimum use in landcare projects.
"Everyone will benefit from these tools, from large-scale developers through to local bush regenerators and plant ecologists. This will lead to a higher standard of restoration, with more efficiency and for less money," he said.
Dr Rossetto said the map will let practitioners know where to source suitable plant species for their site, display ideal habitat locations for each species, and provide future climatic models to plan for climate change.
The executive director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kim Ellis, said government and industry have spent $6.8 billion on land restoration in Australia since 1997.
And according to Dr Susan Prober at CSIRO, more than $US2 trillion ($2.7 trillion) a year is spent on land restoration globally.
A spokeswoman for the Royal Botanic Garden, Maria Atkinson, said management of land restoration has meant "billions have been spent on random success".
Dr Rossetto told Fairfax Media: "Assessment of land restoration projects has been based on short political cycles. It has been measured by dollars spent and plants planted."
Instead, he said, success needs to be based on systems to quantify what species have survived and the quality of that survival. That requires data.
Dr Prober is the principal research scientist at CSIRO Land and Water. She is not connected to the project.
She said: "Sequencing just one species is the equivalent of a PhD thesis, so working on 200 is a really big project."
Dr Rossetto said: "The improved speed and capacity of today's genetic technology has made it possible to study and use plant DNA data on a large scale."
It is this large scale that the CSIRO's Dr Prober said is novel about this project, that and "the fact they are putting the whole interactive infrastructure online".
She said: "It's crucial that land management strategies address climate change and look at variation within species, so if this project is addressing that it's certainly worth doing".
Land restoration projects are not just about clearing lantana along suburban creeks. They involve large-scale projects in mining, agriculture and forestry.
Holders of mining leases are required to deposit a bond with the NSW government to cover the full cost of land rehabilitation. Last year, that fund was sitting above $2 billion.
Dr Rossetto said a user-friendly website and mobile application should be available by the end of the year that will give everyone access to location-based plant genetic information.
"This approach will provide information of genetic distribution across the landscape," Dr Rossetto said. "Site regeneration requires genetic diversity."
That online tool will allow land managers to plan for suitability of materials and present opportunities for nurseries and farmers to grow and stockpile appropriate plants for regeneration programs.
Restore & Renew has four years funding worth $2.5 million in addition to ongoing contributions from the Botanic Garden, giving a total budget of $4 million. Dr Rossetto said he hoped it would turn into a rolling program.