ITP is part of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) Science & Technology (S&T) Pest Identification Technology Lab (PITL).
What we do
ITP delivers innovative, scientifically valid, digital diagnostic resources to assist those responsible for screening and identifying invasive invertebrates (e.g., insects, mites, snails, and slugs), plant diseases, and weeds, which pose a risk to U.S. agriculture and natural resources. We develop these resources in collaboration with experts from around the country and around the world. We also provide training and technical support to these expert contributors to ensure high quality resources are released.
Please note that the information in this website has not been formally disseminated by the USDA and should not be construed to represent agency determination or policy.
Core ITP Products
IDtools: Through digital identification tool websites, ITP offers comprehensive resources for PPQ and its partners who need to screen for or identify plant pests and diseases. Tool authors are experts in the identification of arthropod pests, plant diseases and pathogens, weeds, and commodities. ITP’s tools include interactive identification and diagnostic keys, illustrated, content- rich fact sheets, filterable image galleries, glossaries, and other pest-specific identification information.
Search IDaids: ITP maintains a growing database of IDaids — high-quality, vetted digital resources tools that support identification of plant pests of concern to PPQ. IDaids are image galleries, keys, fact sheets, screening aids, molecular identification tools, and more. The Search IDaids website provides a quick and easy way for the public to search this collection of over 6,500 resources from around the world.
PPQ IDaids: This is a secured database that is only accessible to PPQ staff. In addition to the public IDaids resources, this database contains additional resources for use within PPQ such as National Taxonomists’ literature collections, PPQ-developed identification aids, commodity inspection aids, and more. PPQ staff members should contact ITP if interested in having their plant pest-related resources hosted on PPQ IDaids.
imageID: This resource is currently restricted to USDA-APHIS-PPQ employees and USDA-ARS National Taxonomists. imageID is a searchable online collection of high-quality images of plant pests and plant disease symptoms. imageID contains over 200,000 images representing nearly 32,00 taxa. Over half of the images are of intercepted specimens and are associated with interception data (e.g., commodity association and origin).
Other Identification Resources
CAPS screening aids: ITP has developed dozens of printable screening aids to support the Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey (CAPS) community. Screening aids are intended to be used by persons screening traps for CAPS target pests, and each aid includes background information on the pest, basic sorting, level 1 and level 2 screening, keys, references, and detailed photos of targets, non-targets, and diagnostic characters.
IPM Images ITP Node: ITP maintains a large public image gallery on ipmimages.org, an image sharing site focused on organisms of economic concern maintained by University of Georgia’s Bugwood Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. The gallery includes images from ITP’s many IDtools, which were taken by taxonomic experts, as well as thousands of photos taken by the ITP team.
Morphology diagrams: This image gallery contains a collection of labeled diagrams to assist users in understanding the morphology of major groups of insects, mollusks, nematodes, and plants.
Taxonomic tutorial videos: These videos provide succinct introductions by taxonomic experts to the identification of important pest groups. The videos cover how to prepare difficult to study specimens such as mites and scales, taxonomy, and demonstrations on keying out pests.
Imaging webinars: In 2021 ITP, in collaboration with Agri-Food Canada, hosted an online workshop on diagnostic photography of insect and plants. This workshop covered many useful topics such as specimen selection, equipment and software, and photography techniques. Recordings of the webinar and slides are available on this page.
Our Team
USDA-APHIS-PPQ-S&T Pest Identification Technology Lab (PITL)
Kojun Kanda, PhD: Biological Scientist, ITP Project Coordinator
Todd Gilligan, PhD: PITL Lab Director
Julia Scher: Biological Scientist, IDtools and mobile apps.
Colorado State University (CSU) Department of Biology
Hanna Royals: CSU Principal Investigator and imageID Coordinator
Ashley Gottlieb: Botanist
Melissa Islam, PhD: IDtools Coordinator
Paul Langlois: Plant Pathologist
Lindsey Seastone: Biologist, ITP Node Coordinator
Aimee Ward: Search IDaids and PPQ IDaids Coordinator
North Carolina State University (NCSU) Center for Integrated Pest Management (CIPM)
Yu Takeuchi, PhD: NCSU Principal Investigator
Robin Boudwin: Programmer, IDtools
Cong Mai: Programmer, IDaids, IDtools
Mikel Shilling: Programmer, IDaids, IDtools
University of Georgia (UGA) Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health (Bugwood)
Joe LaForest: UGA Principal Investigator and Programmer, imageID
Sai Dasari: Programmer, imageID