Tania Brenes- Arguedas (WPDN)
The Communicator: Volume 5, Issue 5, May 2024

Recently, the NPDN data committee (NDC) tackled a complex issue. How to enter diseases caused by complexes of organisms or caused by interactions among multiple pathogens and/or abiotic factors in the National Data Repository (NDR).

Because complex diseases are not caused by a single organism, and identification of the causal agents is not always necessary for diagnosis, these diagnoses do not lend themselves to a binomial name as used by most other pest codes in the NDR. In these instances, the common name is what best describes the problem. Inconsistent naming has plagued the entry of complex diseases in the NDR. For the purpose of standardizing non-taxonomic names in the NDR, the NDC cleaned the existing pest codes, and has published a guideline describing how to enter these in the NDR moving forward. View the guideline online – login is required.

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