The meeting was opened by the ISPI President, Christian Borgemeister. A list of the participants of the meeting is attached as Annex I. The provisional agenda, which corresponded to the numbered sections of this report was adopted.

Christian Borgemeister was elected as chairman for the meeting. Bernhard Zelazny and Olaf Zimmermann served as rapporteurs.

Christian Borgemeister reported on the activities of the Society between July 2002 and December 2003, see Annex II for a summary. Maintaining and improving the ISPI webpage which provides access to a variety of information was one of the main activities of the Society. This includes a list of relevant on-line journals, a database of scientists (about 5200 registrations had been received until the end of 2003) and a database with literature on locusts, grasshoppers and thrips. Currently the ISPI webpage has about 500 visitors per week. Two CDs have been issued by the Society during 2003, an update of the ISPI "Pest Directory" database and a CD with literature on locust and grasshopper pests (published in collaboration with GTZ, CIRAD and FAO).

On behalf of the finance committee Olaf Zimmermann reported on the income and expenditures of the Society during the years 2002 and 2003. These are summarized in Annex III. In both years the income exceeded the expenditures. At the end of 2003 the account balance was Euro 2716.

During the discussion on financial matters, Bernhard Zelazny explained the financial situation for the ISPI "Pest Directory" database. Proceeds from the sale of the database are split with 20% going to the Society and 80% being used to cover production, shipment and other costs. It was noted that in order to ensure the long-term viability of the database it will be necessary to shift more from voluntary work to paying scientists for data processing/input activities.

In relation to the "Pest Directory" database the meeting participants decided to:

a) leave the share for ISPI at 20%;
b) use abstracts of scientific literature only from journals which provide copyright permission to ISPI without charges.

The activities of the working groups on locusts and thrips were briefly summarized by Bernhard Zelazny. In the locust working group various organizations (GTZ, through Hans Wilps, CIRAD through Michel Lecoq, FAO, through Christian Pantenius and others, and IITA/LUBILOSA, through Jürgen Langewald) were collaborating with ISPI in the production of a CD containing a comprehensive collection of locust literature (see next agenda item). In the thrips working group Paola Irene Carrizo, Richard zur Strassen and Gerald Moritz contributed data and information on thrips for the Pest Directory database. During the discussions it was noted that an information package similar to the locust literature CD might be also of interest for other pest groups.

Olaf Zimmermann had independently reviewed the locust literature CD and presented its features during the meeting. The CD contains 275 full text articles relevant to locust/grasshopper management for which copyright permission could be obtained or which were published by the collaborating organizations. Most texts were converted into htm format; some are included as pdf files. An index system allows the user to navigate between the articles and to find documents and sections according to various criteria like journals, research topics, authors, pest species, beneficial species, publication years, or keywords. A special search function produces a list of document sections which contain a given word or phrase, including the number of times the word was found in the section, authors, publication year and title.

An expanded 2nd issue is already envisaged and a number of improvements were suggested for the next version during the meeting. For example, it would be useful to make it clearer that the CD also contains a version of the ISPI "Pest Directory" with more than 6000 literature citations (usually with abstracts) for locusts and grasshoppers and with advanced search and filter functions.

During this an the following agenda item a discussion developed on how the Society could attract more members specialized in the field of information exchange and how the objectives and activities of the Society could be more clearly defined. It was noted that most groups active in the field of pest management collect and disseminate information in their respective fields of interest. However, the Society has started to develop expertise in methological aspects of organizing, accessing and distributing pest management information. In the long term the Society could become more successful if it could further develop and specialize on such methodological expertise. A workshop which could cover such methological aspects might be a useful step towards achieving this. The meeting decided to explore the possibility of organizing such a workshop. As a first step Christian Borgemeister, Bernhard Zelazny and Jürg Huber would collaborate in developing an appropriate concept for the workshop and contact possible participants.

It was noted that a number of the full members of the Society are particularly active in helping with organizational matters, data collection or other activities of the Society. The meeting participants decided that the Society should express its appreciation to its more active members by distributing complimentary copies of the "Pest Directory" database to them once a year when a new issue is being published. The executive committee would decide each year on such a distribution list.

The next meeting was set to the beginning of 2005 with exact date and location to be discussed and decided. It was also planned to try to organize an additional get-together of ISPI members during the German Plant Protection Meeting in Hamburg (20-23 September 2004). It was noted that at least 4 members would attend the Plant Protection Meeting.

The ISPI webpage had a link to the list of meetings prepared by Thorsten Kraska for his PPIGB webpage. This link was deleted near the end of 2003 because only 2 meetings were listed for that year. The meeting participants noted that a link to a list of relevant meetings is being appreciated by visitors of the ISPI webpage and that is should be tried to re-establish a link to a list of relevant meetings.

An overview of the Society and its activities will be prepared Bernhard Zelazny and Christian Borgemeister for the IVA newsletter "Profil online".

Christian Borgemeister - Chairman
Bernhard Zelazny and Olaf Zimmermann - Rapporteurs

Christian Borgemeister
Universität Hannover

Jürg Huber
BBA, Darmstadt

Alois Huger Darmstadt (retired)

Richard zur Strassen
Senckenberg Institute, Frankfurt (retired)

Bernhard Zelazny
Griesheim (retired)

Olaf Zimmermann
BBA, Darmstadt

The International Society for Pest Information (ISPI) has continued to provide scientists with information on pests, plant diseases and weeds. As before, the main focus has been on relevant scientific literature and on addresses of professionals, institutes and companies. The most important society activities have been:

1. Maintenance of the ISPI webpage (http://www.pestinfo.org) which, among others, provides access to relevant scientific journals, an address database of professionals registered with the Society (about 5,200 as of end of 2003), and a database with scientific literature for locusts, grasshoppers and thrips. In 2003, the number of visitors to the webpage has increased by more than 20% compared to 2002. The list of scientific journals was the most frequently visited webpage, followed by the database of scientists.
2. Publication of an improved and expanded issue of the "Pest Directory" database as CD-ROM in April 2003. The CD contains the full dataset of the collected addresses and literature with various filter and search options. About 100 CDs have been sold by the Society in 2003.
3. Several Society members attended the DGaaE Meeting in Halle in April 2003, where a poster about ISPI was presented. Olaf Zimmermann also gave a presentation about the Society and the Pest Directory database.
4. ISPI collaborated with GTZ, CIRAD and FAO in assembling a collection of scientific literature covering pest management aspects of locusts and grasshoppers. This involved scanning literature from the Acridological Abstracts (1950 - 1981) and from other sources and converting them into the format of the Pest Directory database. About 6,000 literature references, most with abstracts, were entered. In addition, 275 full text articles were collected, scanned and formatted for access with an internet browser. A CD with the collection of literature was published in November 2003. A second issue is envisaged for the coming years which would contain additional full text articles.

Christian Borgemeister (President)
Institute of Plant Diseases and Plant Protection
University of Hannover

Presented by the ISPI Finance Committee (January 2004)
Jürg Huber
Olaf Zimmermann
Matthias Zweigert