September 1998, Volume 19 No. 3

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

Internet Round-Up

One area where the Internet is useful is for finding out what biocontrol researchers in other countries are doing. Sites such as the Biological Control Virtual Information Center [http://ipmwww.ncsu.edu/biocontrol/newindex.htm], which we have mentioned before, are excellent for US and international links, but it is more difficult to find out what is going on in other regional and national research organizations and universities. One outstandingly useful link for this is the ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research) website at

http://www.cgiar.org/isnar

This site contains a worldwide directory of about a thousand international, regional and national organizations and universities working in agricultural research that have a homepage on the Web. These are listed in the ISNAR-AROW directory at

http://www.cgiar.org/isnar/Home1/AROW/AROWintr.htm

ISNAR has recently introduced a new feature - hosted homepages for national research organizations in developing countries at

http://www.cgiar.org/isnar/Home1/hosted.htm

Information on research institutions, main activities and staff on these pages is provided by the institutions, and they are listed in ISNAR's AROW directory, with an Email link to a contact in the institution. The purpose of this project is to provide an Internet presence, at no charge, for institutions in countries where Internet access is difficult or expensive. In order to have a homepage hosted on ISNAR's website, the institution must have an email link. Further information is provided at the site above, or contact Email:

In India, ICAR (the Indian Council for Agricultural Research) is developing an Agricultural Research Information System (ARIS) to give national agricultural research scientists better access to research and management information available in India and other countries. The basic infrastructure required for linking all ICAR institutes has already been created: email connections have been established to 72 out of the 86 ICAR institutes. ICAR is also developing an Agricultural Research Information Centre (ARIC) as a central source of information on all ICAR research projects and schemes. It is currently being upgraded to provide on-line linking and downloading facilities for the ICAR system and the Internet. To find out more about ICAR's Internet presence go to

http://www.nic.in/icar/ICARMAIN.HTM

A number of national organizations already have seasoned websites with a lot of useful information and services for biocontrol researchers and practitioners worldwide. One such is the EMBRAPA/Base de Dados Tropical site at

http://www.bdt.org.br/bdt/biocontrol/

This biological control information system has a number of databases, including an increasingly important one on `Who is who in risk analysis of the use of biocontrol agents' [see BNI 18(2)]. To add your name to this list or get further information, contact Email: . The site also has information on the current status of legislation relating to biocontrol in South America, and it also hosts the email biocontrol discussion list, Biocontrol-L. For readers not familiar with this list, you can subscribe to this list [send the message "Subscribe Biocontrol-l your name" to Email: ] or send messages to subscribers [Email: ].