The National Plant Diagnostic Network.

Following September 11, America's attention and resources were refocused on homeland security. While emphasizing the security of facilities, such as airports, tourist attraction sites, and major public buildings, etc. Congress also recognized the vulnerability of its agricultural systems. On June 12, 2002, the President signed into law the Agricultural Bio-terrorism Protection Act of 2002. The Act covers both animal and plant production and directed the Secretary of Agriculture to develop a network linking plant and animal disease diagnostic facilities across the country. The National Plant diagnostic Network (NPDN) focuses on the plant diseases and pest aspects of the program. Its mission is to enhance national agricultural security by quickly detecting introduced pests and pathogens. This will be achieved by creating a functional nationwide network of public agricultural institutions with a cohesive, distributed system to quickly detect deliberately introduced, high consequence, biological pests and pathogens into our agricultural and natural ecosystems by providing means for quick identifications and establishing protocols for immediate reporting to appropriate responders and decision makers. The network is comprised of Land Grant University plant disease and pest diagnostic facilities across the United States. Lead universities have been selected and designated as regional Centers to represent five regions across the country. These Centers are located at Cornell University, Michigan State University, Kansas State University, University of Florida at Gainesville, and University of California at Davis. The National Agricultural Pest Information System (NAPIS), located at Purdue University, has been designated as the central repository for archiving select data collected from the regions. NAPIS maintains information from the Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey (CAPS), a network of state agricultural organizations and universities that survey for invasive species. As a part of the NPDN, NAPIS will expand its collection of data on plant diseases and other pests. The system will provide a national perspective on agricultural pests through dynamic maps and reports of plant pest distribution. Currently the pest information system houses 1.3 million records on more than 3,800 organisms, and that number will grow significantly as the plant diagnostic network centers start feeding information into the national database in the Spring, 2004. The establishment of the network will provide the means necessary for ensuring all participating Land Grant University diagnostic facilities are alerted of possible outbreaks and/or introductions and are technologically equipped to rapidly detect and identify pests and pathogens. This will be accomplished by establishing an effective communication network between regional expertise, developing harmonized reporting protocols with the national diagnostic network participants, and cataloging pest and disease occurrence to be included in the national database. The NPDN national database at Purdue University will provide summary reports, distribution maps, pattern analysis, and data sets for use in other studies.