EPPO Q-bank: a new database maintained within the EPPO framework
EPPO Q-bank is a database to support diagnostic activities on plant pests which was transferred to EPPO and officially launched in May 2019. This database originally called Q-bank started as part of a Dutch project to strengthen the plant health infrastructure. Q-bank was first launched in 2010 and further developed in the framework of the EU funded project QBOL. Since 2011, the continuation of this project has been financed by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The possible maintenance of Q-bank within EPPO has been discussed for several years and in September 2018, the EPPO Council agreed that the database should be transferred to EPPO.
The primary aim of EPPO Q-bank is to host sequence data for a number of pests, as well as to provide information on biological material, in particular from where this material can be obtained. Information is provided per discipline (arthropods, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, phytoplasmas, viruses & viroids, and invasive plants). Data from the original Q-bank database has now been transferred to the new EPPO Q-bank database, and during the course of 2019 and in 2020, further work will be conducted to harmonize the content and structure of the data among disciplines. Links are made between EPPO Q-bank and the EPPO Global Database, so that users can access additional pest-specific information, such as geographical distributions, pictures, and documents (e.g. EPPO Standards or Pest Risk Analyses).
The technical content of EPPO Q-bank is managed by a group of curators per discipline and the coordination of the work is ensured by the EPPO Secretariat.
Access EPPO Q-bank: https://qbank.eppo.int/
Sources
EPPO Secretariat (2019-05).