June 1999, Volume 20 No. 2

• Editorial
• General News
• Training News
• Internet Round-Up
• Announcements
• Conference Reports
• Biorational
• New Books

Internet Round-Up

By: Tony Little, Technical Support Group to the Global IPM Facility, CABI Bioscience.

In this issue, `Internet Round-up' focuses on augmentative biocontrol. There is in fact quite a lot of information out there, but you have to know where to look for it - using the search engines gets you nowhere fast.

I started with Radcliffe's IPM World Textbook at

http://ipmworld.umn.edu/

This is the University of Minnesota's electronic textbook of integrated pest management featuring contributed chapters by internationally recognized experts, and is rapidly becoming one of my favourite sites. I increasingly use it as starting point for biocontrol information searches; since the book is fairly comprehensive, the chances are you will find something of relevance. So it proved to be here. The chapter `Biological control: approaches and applications' has a section on augmentation, which serves as a nice introduction to the subject. But the other reason I like this site is that it is fantastically well linked, listing close on 100 sites relevant to IPM.

Of these I chose Mid-West Biological Control News Online at

http://www.wisc.edu/entomology/mbcn/mbcn.html  

which I have found useful from time to time. Augmentative biocontrol crops up in a couple of back issues (Volume I, No. 4, `Augmentation: the periodic release of natural enemies' and Volume VI, No. 1, `Quality of natural enemies').

Parasitoid rearing systems are discussed at several sites, for example the Technology Transfer Information Center ( United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)) at

http://www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/tektran/tektran.html

which has a database of selected pre-publication notices of recent research results from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of USDA. Staying with USDA, the Insect Biocontrol Lab at

http://www.barc.usda.gov/psi/ibl/ibl.htm

gives details of its work on physiological contributions to augmentative biocontrol of whiteflies and weeds.

Some of the biocontrol companies web pages are also worth a visit, particularly Koppert's at

http://www.koppert.nl/english/resear.htm

Wageningen Agricultural University has a database that lists its research publications at

http://www.agralin.nl/luwpubs/

which includes a few papers on augmentative biocontrol, and is quite a useful resource generally.

The LUBILOSA (for French speakers: LUtte BIologique contre les LOcustes et les SAuteriaux) site at

http://www.cgiar.org/iita/research/LUBILOSA/index.htm   

describes the exciting project involving the inundative release of the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae for the control of locusts and grasshoppers, and the development of a commercial product, `Green Muscle', which was registered in South Africa last year [see BNI 20(1), 5N].