Global Information System for the
Biodiversity of Plant Pathogenic Fungi

A collaborative, distributed Internet project to share information about fungal biodiversity

The GLOPP project started in the summer of 2000 and continued until spring 2003. It aimed to provide a unified view of data about fungi parasitizing higher plants. The information system was to integrate data on host plant specificity, geographical distribution, and a core set of descriptive characters that allow an interactive online identification. Since our resources are limited, European pathogens were treated with priority, to guarantee high data quality and a certain completeness.

The original submitted plan for GLOPP had a 6 year funding expectation, but due to the start of GBIF none of the projects in the biodiversity informatics section of BIOLOG received continued funding. The new funding was aligned with the priorities given by GBIF on names and specimen collections, which did not match with the phytopathology description and identification scope of GLOPP. We have been able to expand the GLOPP database with a new data set (the Doppelbaur Index) within the GBIF-DE-Mycology project, but have been unable to secure any real continuation funding since. We plan to continue our work within the framework of international, collaborative successor projects.