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How to Manage PestsInteractive Tools and Models: NEMABASE Database Description
NEMABASE was developed in the Department of Nematology, University of California, Davis by
Programming was carried out by
Data were entered by
Funding was provided by
The developers are committed to nonpesticide approaches to the management of plant-parasitic nematodes in agricultural and urban situations. Howard Ferris was one of the authors of the original grant proposal that in 1978 led to the establishment of the UC IPM Project. He has been involved with the project in various capacities during the intervening years. His research interests include the development and definition of damage threshold levels of plant parasites. Edward P. Caswell-Chen is a former member of the technical committee of the UC IPM Project. His research interests are the documentation and characterization of host-plant resistance to nematodes, and the use of cover crops that are detrimental to the survival and infectivity of plant-parasitic nematodes. Becky B. Westerdahl is responsible for providing technical backup to field level advisory personnel and for adaptive research to resolve nematode problems in the wide range of crop types grown in California. She is a primary author of the UC IPM Guidelines for Nematode Management. Jeffrey Gardner and Umesh Kodira are former graduate students in the Department of Nematology at UC Davis. Rebecca Sloan has a master's degree from UC Davis in Plant Protection and Pest Management.
Objective. The objective in developing NEMABASE is to collate, interpret and evaluate available information on the host status of plants to the plant-parasitic nematodes, and to make it available as a basis for management decisions. The database will allow selection of nonhost crops, and determination of the availability of resistant cultivars, for species and races of plant-parasitic nematodes. It will allow selection of cover crops that are nonhosts to resident plant-parasitic nematode populations. It will provide capabilities of rapid search of the available knowledge base for novel species of crops or cover crops that warrant testing in a cropping systems in relation to their effect on resident nematode populations. Nematicides. Nematode management for economically important crops in most of the world has been centered on the use of nematicides for more than 40 years. The number of nematicides available for management has declined precipitously over the past 10 years. Furthermore, the use of nematicides may be incompatible with the enhancement of soil biological activity that underlies successful sustainable agricultural systems. Alternative management of plant-parasitic nematodes requires combinations of tactics. Many of those tactics involve selection, and temporal and spatial arrangement, of crop-plant or cover-crop species and cultivars to reduce nematode numbers and damage. Plant species selected for beneficial effects on soil fertility and microbiological activity should not enhance species of nematodes that are parasitic on primary economic crops in the farming system. Alternative Tactics. Alternatives management tactics for plant-parasitic nematodes include: growing nematode-resistant cultivars, growing nonhost primary crops (rotations), growing nonhost cover crops, using fallow periods, enhancing natural biological control, and implementing cultural practices. Each of these choices must be made in relation to the nematode species and environmental variables, such as soil temperature, texture, and irrigation regimes, at a given location. For example, the use of cultivars or rootstocks resistant to the predominant nematode species in a field is effective. Frequently, however, there are several damaging species present, and cultivars have not been selected for resistance to multiple nematode species. In addition, nematode species differ in their host ranges, and plants differ in their host status to various nematodes. These differences are the basis for crop rotation sequences; however, the design of successful rotations requires access to the available information on host status. There exists an abundant, although incomplete and often inaccessible, literature on the nematode-host status of many different plants. Literature. What is not available, is easy, rapid access to the available literature on the host status of different plant species to different nematode species. Implementation of optimization tools for nematode management requires access to data on the nematode-host interaction. An example of an attempt to unify existing host-status information is the nematode management system developed in the early 1980s for the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM) project IMPACT system (Ferris et al, 1986). Ferris and coworkers have developed crop sequence optimization algorithms, recognizing that crops differ in both their net returns and their nematode host status (Duncan and Ferris, 1983; Ferris, 1978; Ferris et al, 1986; Ferris and Greco, 1992; Ferris et al, 1994). Crop and cultivar host status for each nematode species; the qualitative categorizations of "host," "non-host," "resistant," and of susceptibility to damage ("tolerant," "intolerant"), are immensely useful as a basis for crop-choice decisions. At a more critical level of resolution, for design of optimal cropping sequences, quantitative information is necessary. Host status of a cultivar must be expressed in terms of seasonal multiplication or decline rates of each nematode species (Ferris, 1985). Damage functions and thresholds in relation to individual nematode species, although not available for many crop-nematode combinations, allow more critical analyses. Sometimes quantitative information is available from experiment, in other cases it can be inferred or estimated from knowledge of the nematode biology. There have been several previous efforts to collate nematode-host status information. Each of these efforts has limitations; primarily they are outdated and not readily accessible. Also, taxonomic revisions have occurred, and nematode host races and biotypes were not recognized in the earlier literature. In NEMABASE these complications have been dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Number of Records. As of November 1995, there are 38,682 records from 96 countries in the database. The records include information on 6,140 plant taxa identified at the genus, species or variety level and 801 nematode taxa identified at the genus, species or race level. That information has been extracted from 4,747 articles published over the last 90 years in six journals that deal primarily with plant-parasitic nematodes and in widespread reports assembled in earlier compilations of host records. It is estimated that about 70 percent of the available data on plant and nematode interactions have been compiled and entered into the database. The developers plan to continue the compilation of historical data and to keep the database updated with emerging data.
Duncan, L. W. and H. Ferris. 1983. Effects of Meloidogyne incognita on cotton and cowpeas in rotation. Proc. Beltwide Cotton Prod. Res. Conf. 22-26. Ferris, H. 1978. Nematode economic thresholds: derivation, requirements, and theoretical considerations. J. Nematol. 10:341-350. Ferris, H. 1985. Density-dependent nematode seasonal multiplication rates and overwinter survivorship: a critical point model. J. Nematol. 17:93-100. Ferris, H., D. A. Ball, L.W. Beem and L. A. Gudmundson. 1986. Using nematode count data in crop management decisions. Calif. Agric. 40:12-14. Ferris, H., H. L. Carlson, and B. B. Westerdahl. 1994. Crop rotation effects on population levels of Meloidogyne chitwoodi and Pratylenchus neglectus, and consequences for potato crops. Agronomy Journal. 86:340-348. Ferris, H. and N. Greco. 1992. Management strategies for Heterodera goettingiana in a vegetable cropping system in Italy. Fundamental and Applied Nematology. 15:25-33.
The online help is designed to help you get started, and gives specific information about how to use the program features. Press the HELP button or press F12 at any time to access the Help Menu. (From the Help Menu, double-click in the Memo field of the desired topic.) Specify plant and nematode. To run a database search, or "query," you must first select a Plant and a Nematode. These may be selected from higher taxon, e.g., family, to intraspecific levels (e.g., variety, cultivar, race). Refer to the Help topic "General Query Procedure" for more information. Specify criteria. To further specify the search criteria, you may set any number of "filters": Date Range, Host Status, Susceptibility, Tolerance, Nature of Record, Study Site, Soil Texture, Climate, Geographic Origin of record, and Data Quality. Multiple conditions may be designated for each filter. Begin the search. After selecting the Plant, Nematode, and any desired Filters, click on the Setup box next to the nematode name to move the red arrow in preparation for processing the query. Press the Process button to begin the search. Output reports. When the search is completed, press Print to generate a report that includes fields you designate. The report can be printed to a printer and to database or text files. The files may be imported into a database program or spreadsheet for further analysis, or into a word processor. When searching, note that several common names for nematodes or plants may be used preferentially in different regions. Many records will be missed if a query is processed using a common name designation not listed in the nematode or plant names table of NEMABASE. It will always be safer to use the genus and species name of the nematode, or genus and species (and variety, if appropriate) of the plant.
NEMABASE is structured as a series of relational database tables with fields for the following features of nematodes and plants, and for their interaction:
(Presented in the order of their appearance in the Browse and Report Screens)
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