About Development of NPIRS began in 1981 under a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). NPIRS became fully operational in October 1983. The system was developed to allow quick retrieval of current information about EPA-registered pesticides for individuals and organizations working on pesticide-related activities. Due to an increasingly restricted federal budget, the USDA intended that NPIRS would become self-sufficient in its operation by recovering costs from user fees. There were some initial grants and cooperative agreements with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve public access of pesticide information. However, for several years NPIRS has operated on a cost-recovery basis with money generated solely from its user fees. As part of Purdue University, NPIRS is not-for-profit, but is required to recover all operational costs. In 1985, the National Agricultural Pest Information System (NAPIS) became available through the NPIRS operation. NAPIS, an information network for pest and bio-control data, contains information that describes the results of a wide range of plant pest surveys conducted throughout the United States. The NAPIS system serves as a useful tool for protecting American agriculture from losses due to plant pests and for strengthening America's agricultural trade. The Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey (CAPS) program is the sponsoring organization of NAPIS and is a joint effort between the USDA and the individual states. In 1989, the Export Certification Project (EXCERPT) was developed through a cooperative agreement with USDA. The EXCERPT system is a centralized database that contains up-to-date export summaries used for issuing phytosanitary certificates. The USDA and its cooperators, which include state and county agencies given the authority to issue phytosanitary certificates, use the information in EXCERPT when certifying unprocessed and unmanufactured plant products for export. In June of 1991, NPIRS moved from the Entomology building on campus to an office building in Purdue Research Park. At that time the overall group name was changed to the Center for Environmental and Regulatory Information Systems and NPIRS, NAPIS, and EXCERPT each became separate projects under CERIS. In October of 1998, the NPIRS State Pesticide Information Retrieval System was developed and made available under the NPIRS project. The purpose of the NSPIRS system was to allow retrieval of state pesticide information, with all associated federal label data, at an affordable cost to both the state regulatory agencies providing data and other individuals whose primary interest is state pesticide data. In 2004, NPIRS celebrated 20 years of service to its pesticide database users. Engineering Mall fountain at Purdue University. Hovde Hall, the Administration Building is in the background.