New version of the EPPO Plant Protection Thesaurus
The new version of the EPPO Plant Protection Thesaurus is now available on a CD-Rom (Version 2.1). This searchable database covers organisms important in agriculture and crop protection: crops, pests (including pathogens and weeds), natural enemies, organisms used in ecotoxicological studies.
For each organism it provides:
- preferred scientific name
- Bayer code
- synonyms
- common names in many languages
- taxonomic relationships and other classifications
At present, about 27,700 species of plants are included (cultivated plants, wild plants and weeds), 19,000 species of animals (especially insects, mites and nematodes) and 4000 species of microorganisms, including viruses. EPPO has already made some major improvements to the data and program, and intends to progress continuously in making the database more accurate and homogeneous.
The new version covers the following improvements:
- Removal of duplicate codes so that every Bayer code is now unique.
- Every organism correctly classified within a single hierarchical biological classification.
- System extended to cover all organisms in EPPO's plant quarantine system PQR, and to ensure full harmonization of codes and names with PQR.
- Addition of viruses and phytoplasmas.
- Corrected French common names to include accented characters.
- More and better options for data retrieval.
The EPPO Plant Protection Thesaurus is available as a stand-alone CD-Rom for use on a single PC, with an interface allowing the data set for each organism to be retrieved by entering its Bayer code or any of its names. It can be ordered from the EPPO Secretariat at a price of 170 EUR. Users who already have a license to use the Bayer code system can obtain it at the reduced price of 113 EUR.
Note: EPPO can also supply on diskettes the Bayer code system (version 2.3, August 2002) as data files for incorporation in users' own systems (core files, no search interface). A licence fee of 180 EUR is charged for this. The EPPO Plant Protection Thesaurus on CD-Rom does not give the user the right to use the data in this way.
Sources
EPPO Secretariat 2002-10.