Frazzled by the search for facts on Pfiesteria? The National Agricultural Library offers some help via the World Wide Web.

NAL, part of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, has produced a new web page devoted to Pfiesteria piscicida. That’s the toxic organism suspected of killing fish and generating health concerns in some Maryland and North Carolina waterways.

The Pfiesteria web page is being maintained by NAL’s Water Quality Information Center. The address for the Pfiesteria page:

www.nal.usda.gov/wqic/pfiest.html

The site provides links to North Carolina State University laboratories conducting Pfiesteria research, as well as other Pfiesteria information sites. Also offered: Pfiesteria fact sheets produced by Maryland and North Carolina state agencies and a bibliography of scientific literature on Pfiesteria.

The web page offers electronic links to the state of Maryland’s departments of natural resources, agriculture and health and mental hygiene, and to the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. All of these agencies can provide Pfiesteria information.

The Water Quality Information Center will periodically update the site with additional scientific information and links to other important Pfiesteria sites.

The Water Quality Information Center is one of several information centers that NAL has established to provide current information on areas of particular concern to U.S. and world agriculture. Other subjects include agricultural trade and marketing, alternative farming systems, animal welfare, aquaculture, biotechnology, food and nutrition, plant genome, rural development and health, and technology transfer.

NAL, in Beltsville, Md., is one of four national libraries of the United States. The others are the Library of Congress, National Library of Education and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. NAL is the largest agricultural library in the world.

Contact: Brian Norris, National Agricultural Library, ARS, Beltsville, Md. 20705, phone (301) 504- 6778, fax (301) 504-5472, bnorris@nal.usda.gov.