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Annual yield losses due to pests are estimated to be in billions of dollars worldwide. Plant protection is one of the most important components of crop production in most agricultural areas of the world, and the effectiveness of crop protection depends on accurate and timely diagnosis of phytosanitary problems. A great deal of knowledge in plant protection and technologies exists in the scientific domain. The dissemination of these technologies could be enhanced by using expert systems and other artificial intelligence technologies. Expert systems are simple, yet powerful enough to provide a considerable amount of written and visual information. They are good for solving complex problems and they are modular and modifiable. They are affordable, consistent in prediction, and have the advantages of expressiveness and intuitiveness. However, a rapid generation tool is necessary to reduce the time needed to build expert systems for different crops. A domain-specific generic software for the generation of expert systems was developed, and used to build a prototype barley protection expert system based on existing knowledge. Web knowledge acquisition forms were developed for barley, chickpea, and wheat, and encoded in XML format. The knowledge bases relating to plant protection for barley, wheat, and chickpea were captured using knowledge accumulated by scientists in the co-operating centers. The knowledge base for each crop was divided into four components: variety or host plant selection, cultural practices, pest identification, and pest control.