PQ—the EPPO data base on plant quarantine pests

PQ is a relational data base, in dBase IV, composed of files PESTFILE (of plant pest names), HOSTFILE (of host plant names), GEOGFILE (of names of countries and geographical areas), GEOGLINK (of relationships between geographical entities), PQATTACK (of host/pest combinations) and PQOCCUR (of country/pest combinations). It holds all the relevant information from EPPO data sheets on quarantine organisms, together with equivalent information from FAO and from other Regional Plant Protection Organizations, whose data bases are of the same origin and fully compatible with PQ. PQR is a menu-driven on-screen system for consulting the data base, to be made available to Member Governments as a compiled run-time version. Other EPPO systems (for fruit-tree viruses, for the European Handbook of Plant Diseases, for intercepted consignments) also use the central files PESTFILE, HOSTFILE and GEOGFILE.