Biocontrol News and Information

March 2000, Volume 21 No. 1

• General News
• Training News
• Internet Round-Up
• Announcements
• Conference Reports
• New books
• Proceedings

 Internet Round-up

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

A few issues ago, I think I indulged in some rather tedious bleating about the usefulness (or lack of) of Internet search engines for tracking down technical biocontrol information. While you should not ever admit you are plain wrong, at least not in so many words and certainly not in print, I am prepared to make an exception for water hyacinth. Typing `water hyacinth into the engine (I usually use Yahoo or Altavista), brings up about 60 or 70 relevant sites. If you can pick your way around the sites extolling the virtues of water hyacinth as an ornamental, you should be able to find what you are looking for. These are just a few of the most informative and useful that I found, but it's by no means an exhaustive list:

The University of Florida has a Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants and its web page can be found at:

http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/welcome.html

This is a great site. From here you can get easy, free access to masses of information on aquatic weeds in general, including water hyacinth and notes on biology, infestation levels and loads of photographs. There is also a page on biological control agents with links to pictures. You can also access the Aquatic, Wetland and Invasive Plant Database:

http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/database.html

This has over 50,000 citations, 1140 or so of which are related to water hyacinth. You have to go through Telnet which hails from the computing Stone Age (some where in the early 1990s) and is therefore slow and cumbersome. But once you get in it's a great resource.

The Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory at:

http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/index.html

is a USDA-funded lab in Montana, and has a page on biological control of water hyacinth at:

http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/scientists/nspencer/water_h/index.html

From here the Proceedings of the International Water Hyacinth Consortium in 1997, which I understand was a fairly key meeting, are available. There are a few other bits and pieces including a couple of satellite snaps of a suspected infestation on Lake Victoria.

Washington State Department of Ecology at:

http://www.wa.gov/ecology/wq/plants/weeds/aqua010.html

gives a nice little summary of technical information on water hyacinth and other aquatic weeds.

Quite few organizations have put up brief one-pagers for a bit of light reading, including CABI Bioscience:

http://pest.cabweb.org/pest9704.htm

CSIRO:

http://www.csiro.au/promos/ozadvances/Series1Hyacinth.html

Southern Africa environment project:

http://www.saep.org/subject/water/water2_1.html

and the University of Florida (again):

http://gnv.ifas.ufl.edu/%7EFAIRSWEB/IPM/ipmfl/v2n4/hyacinth.htm

As I say, there are many more news items, bulletins and newsletters available. It's just a case of tapping into the search engine and taking your pick.