Plantwise knowledge bank: delivering plant health information to developing country users

The Plantwise knowledge bank is an open access, online resource that provides information to users involved in plant health systems in the developing world. The challenge was to deliver dependable information that could serve users with widely differing needs and understanding and to get actionable knowledge to subsistence farmers in particular. This was met by bringing together resources across CABI, particularly by supplementing core publishing capabilities with the knowledge, skills and understanding of the internationally based scientific staff and their network of collaborators. An iterative development process, with scoping, wireframes and prototype delivery, was undertaken with constant feedback from global users. Content needed to be repurposed from CABI's own databases, brought in from international partners and freshly created, and then delivered to each user in a structure that was easy to navigate and had easy‐to‐use tools to add value. The product has been widely well received and ongoing development will be guided by lessons learned and new requirements as the Plantwise programme expands.