Introductions to the subject

World agriculture: towards 2015/2030: an FAO perspective

J. Bruinsma, ed.; Food and Agriculture Organization Earthscan, 2003, 432pp. £35.00. ISBN 1844070077.

www.fao.org/documents

Review assessing the worldwide prospects for food and agriculture, including fisheries and forestry, considering the issues at stake over the years to 2015 and 2030.

Available online: see website.

Dictionaries, thesauri, classifications

Agricultural Ontology Service: AOS Food and Agriculture Organization

www.fao.org/agris/aos/default.htm

Project to develop a tool to help structure and standardize agricultural terminology in multiple languages for use by any number of different systems around the world. Aims to provide a framework for better indexing and retrieval of resources, increased interaction within the agricultural information community, and to contribute to W3C's Semantic Web [q.v.] activities.

Agrovoc

Food and Agriculture Organization

www.fao.org/agrovoc

Multilingual agricultural thesaurus maintained by FAO. The online version can be searched in seven languages and the whole thesaurus can be downloaded free. New terms can be suggested by e-mail.

Biotechnology from A to Z

W. Bains See entry no. 5012

CAB Thesaurus

CAB International 5th edn, CABI Publishing, 1999. £150.00. ISBN 0851993664.

www.cabi-publishing.org

Widely used thesaurus for the applied life sciences, available in printed and electronic formats; the latter may be used by third parties under licence. An online version, in beta test in 2004, allows searching for individual terms.

Elsevier's dictionary of agriculture: in English, German, French, Russian and Latin

T. Tosheva, M. Djarova and B. Delijska Elsevier, 2000, 786pp. €191.00. ISBN 0444500057.

Multilingual dictionary containing terms in: plant growing and cultivation, processing of agricultural products, soil science, mineral nutrition, fertilizing, plant protection, agrometeorology, biochemistry and physiological characters of plants and animals, forest management and organization, animal breeding, foodstuffs, animal nutrition, veterinary medicine, farm implements and machinery, vehicles, economics and organization of agriculture.

NAL Agricultural Thesaurus: NALT

National Agricultural Library 3rd edn, 2004.

agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt/agt.htm

Excellent online tool for browsing agricultural and biological concepts and terminology, containing some 62,000 terms. Also now available via a WEB SERVICES (SOAP) interface: there is a well written downloadable PDF NAL Thesaurus Web Services Reference Manual.

Laws, standards, codes

Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/cgrfa

A permanent inter-governmental forum aiming to ensure the conservation and sustainable utilization of genetic resources for food and agriculture, as well as the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from their use, for present and future generations.