ESTABLISHMENT OF A COMPUTERIZED BIODIVERSITY BIOTECHNOLOGY NETWORK - THE BRAZILIAN EFFORT

Information technology plays an increasingly vital role in bioindustri al development and in the establishment of biodiversity conservation a nd sustainable management of the environment. Recognizing the need and importance of local and regional database developments, the Tropical Data Base is establishing an interactive biodiversity/biotechnology in formation resource. The system is linked to major international networ ks and information centres, and is based on a workstation system and p ersonal computers. All software was developed to attend specific needs and to cope with hardware limitations, making the system adequate to other developing countries.