New World Biocontrol Catalogue
The last (4th) version of Julien and Griffiths’ A World Catalogue of Agents and their Target Weeds was published in 1998. For many years this was the go-to place to find out what weed biocontrol agents have been released around the world and how successful they have been, but had become seriously out of date. Recently an international team of researchers, led by Rachel Winston, has undertaken a major revision and expansion of this catalogue, which now includes 224 weeds and 552 agents. This was a huge task to which Landcare Research contributed updated information about weed biocontrol agents in New Zealand. A full online version of the catalogue is available from www.ibiocontrol.org/catalog/ and includes querying capabilities to allow for sorting by key pieces of information, such as by weed or by agent and by bioherbicide. Clicking on individual releases will bring you to the full information available, along with supporting references. It is hoped that a mechanism can be found to allow the catalogue to be kept up to date from now on. A shorter print version (current through 2012) has also been prepared and a pdf of this is available on the website.
Funding for both the print and online versions of the catalogue was provided by the United States Forest Service (Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team). Work was conducted by MIA Consulting, the University of Georgia, the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry, the University of Idaho, and the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International.