04/30/08 OPM Online

OPM Online. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. It has taken some years but a valuable tool to the northwest orchardists is finally available online. Dr. Betsy Beers is a professor of entomology with WSU's Tree Fruit Research and has been instrumental in bringing the Orchard Pest Management manual to the web. BEERS: Orchard Pest Management functionally is a web version of a book we wrote in 1993 and at the time our goal was just to have this very complete compilation of biological information, basic biology, management, identification, biological control, sampling; all of the basic information a person would want about a tree fruit pest. There were some small hurdles in getting the OPM manual online. In particular they weren't the copyright holders. Having the manual online will make is available to a lot more people. BEERS: I think it will get really broad usage. Of course given that most of the people that created this are employees of the great state of Washington, our primary target is our growers and consultants in Washington but I would expect that it would get pretty wide usage within the region and even nationally and internationally. Having the manual in electronic form will make updating information easier. BEERS: That's the biggest thing that changes when you go from a book to a website. If I have a new piece of information, I can have that done in about 60 seconds. To view the manual, visit WSU's Tree Fruit Research web site at www.tfrec.wsu.edu. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.