[IPM News #182] -- A U.S. federally sponsored weed information publication, Federal Noxious Weed Disseminules of the U.S., by J. Scher and D. Walters, was recently re-vamped to raise its user-friendliness quotient. The interactive tool offers "photos, text, and keys that aid in determining whether or not an unknown disseminule, (e.g., seed, fruit) found as a contaminant in imported botanicals and agricultural products is a federal noxious weed and is therefore actionable," according to the site http://tinyurl.com/2butd7l. "A disseminule," the text notes, "is a plant part that can be carried away or dispersed from the mother plant and become a new plant somewhere else." The unique tool's latest version, FNWE2 developed using Lucid 3.4, includes a redesigned, more intuitive home page, improved internal page design with improved navigation, an easier to use glossary, and other useful enhancements. The presented information represents research conducted and compiled by the Center for Plant Health Science and Technology, a scientific support group for the Plant Protection and Quarantine program within the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a major wing of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.
Article: WeedsNews1163 (permalink) Categories: :WeedsNews:biosecurity, :WeedsNews:seed dispersal Date: 15 October 2010; 11:18:04 AM AEDT