PETE

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What is PETE?

PETE (Physiochemical Evaluation of the Environment) is a Windows-based Expert System for use on personal computers. PETE will calculate the redistribution of organic compounds in the environment. PETE has been customized to the needs of the Pesticide Safety Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foods. It gives a broad theoretical prediction of the pesticides against which, scientific data provided by applicants for registration can be interpreted.

The system is of direct interest to those working on the fate and behaviour of pesticide residues. It enables rapid transfer to the Directorate of the results of our research on the movement of pesticides in soils and plants, and is a training aid for those requiring quantitative knowledge of factors influencing the fate of crop protection agents in the environment. Important information is also provided for consultation on less familiar topics such as volatilisation from water. The system can also help evaluators to consider items such as residues in food, efficacy and the effects on wildlife. It may be of particular use during the initial "sorting" of applications by the Directorate and in the calculations of predicted environmental concentrations (PEC) required by European protocols.

Features

• The operation of this system is fast, and can be learned quickly. Whilst an interactive run takes about 20 minutes for each compound, a database, assembled from the literature and containing properties of over 800 compounds can speed the preparation of input data.
• Additional information (such as soil texture diagrams) is stored in the context-sensitive Windows help system.
• Predictive routines for ionisable compounds and an empirical method to estimate trace concentrations in lysimeter leachates is included.
• The results of research can be transferred from the bench to the user within hours.
• The results are presented to the user in an attractive and digestible form.

Downloading PETE

The PETE program is now freely available over the internet, click on the download link below to obtain your copy.

Download PETE here (A self-extracting version)

Installation instruction

• Click on the above link to download the pete3.exe file onto your local machine.
• Create a directory called vgadb on your local hard drive (normally c: or d:).
• Run the pete3.exe file as you would any executable file. This will launch a wizard which will decompress the files necessary to run the program.
• NB The decompression wizard will attempt to decompress the files from pete3.exe into the directory c:\vgadb which you created in step 2. If you created the directory on a drive other than c:, amend the path displayed in the dialog box such that it now points to the correct location of the vgadb directory.
• Run the setup.exe file in the vgadb directory to install a working copy of the software.

Troubleshooting

After running the setup.exe file, your computer may show you a dialog box containing the following message
'please add SHARE.EXE /L:500 to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file'

In our experience, this message can be safely ignored, since the installed version of the PETE program will run perfectly well.