Indian Association for Angiosperm Taxonomy (IAAT) was established in the year 1990 under the Societies REGISTRATION Act XXI of 1860 with the head Quarters at Department of Botany, Calicut University, Calicut, Kerala, India.
The association has decided to come up with an official International Journal for nurturing young academicians in the field of taxonomy. The first volume of the journal was published in December 1991 as the culmination of hard work put forwarded by Prof. K.S. Manilal and Dr. V.V. Sivarajan, the first president and secretary of IAAT respectively. The first issue of the journal was printed at Ideal printing Press, Panambra, Thenhipalam in Malappuram district of Kerala. Professor Manilal served as the Executive Editor of the first issue who was supported by executive editors Dr. V.V. Sivarajan and Dr. Philip Mathew.
The editorial advisory committee included prominent names in the field of taxonomy viz. B.L. Burtt (U.K.), P.H. Raven (US), Dan H.Nicolosn (US), Magnus Liden (Sweden),Rob Geeink (Netherlands), A.H.M. Jayasuriya (Sri Lanka), M.G. Pimenov (Russia), Finn N. Rasmussen (Denmark), H.W.Lack (Germany), Hsu Ping-Sheng (China), Nalini M. Nadkarni(US), Y.S. Dave, S.K. Jain, J. Joseph, Shashikala Kshetrapal, K.M.Matthew, P.Pushpangadan, C.K. Shah and Y.D. Tiagi (India). Since then the journal has been published twice in a year with two issues in June and December.
A major face shift of the journal was occurred in the year 2003 in charge of Dr. T.S.Nayar, when Rheedea started to print colour pages. In 2019, journal has started publishing four online issues and two print issues per year. The online issues will be published in March, June, September and December while the printed issues will be published in June and December. The same year the journal has launched an Online Submission Portal (www.journals.iaat.org.in) and stand alone website (www.rheedea.in).
Currently the journal publishes original research articles in angiosperm taxonomy including monographs, revisions, reviews, check-lists, descriptions of new taxa, nomenclatural papers, new reports, phylogeny, numerical taxonomy and book reviews.
The journal is indexed by BIOSIS PREVIEWS and Biological Abstracts of Web of Science, SCOPUS, Indian Science Abstract by NISCAIR, Kew Records of Taxonomy Literature, Current Advances in Plant Science, Indian Citation Index and the latest UGC-CARE list
