Digital diagnostics expand global surveillance
Australia’s digital pest-detection network is expanding globally, to help identify and combat invasive pests threatening our agricultural industries and markets before they arrive, through the CRC for National Plant Biosecurity’s remote microscope network.
Within Australia there are already more than 30 camera-connected microscopes linked to a public, internet-based image library – part of the new digital arsenal being deployed to meet Australia’s biosecurity challenges. Connections include remote districts such as Kununurra in Western Australia, which would otherwise have limited access to the expertise required to identify new plant pests and diseases.
Late last year in central Queensland, cotton crops were ravaged by a species of mealy bug thought to be new to Australia. Almost immediately, remote microscopy was used to send real-time images of the pest via the internet to an expert in California, who was able to identify it as an exotic suspect.
Dr Gary Kong is the project leader for the CRC’s digital diagnostic project and principal plant pathologist with the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.
“Whenever a suspected incursion occurs, it is vital that a positive identification is made as quickly as possible,” Dr Kong says. “Remote microscopy has demonstrated its ability to reach experts wherever they might be and to speed up the identification process.
Early detection and confident identification mean that immediate steps can be taken to minimise the risk or impact of incursion.”
Internationally, the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is supporting efforts to expand the remote microscope network, with a particular focus on fruit fly diagnostics as part of the National Fruit Fly Strategy.
Attending a planning meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Diagnostic Network in Laos in 2009, Dr Kong was able to provide a real-time demonstration of the network to participants.
With the help of the internet and a microscope connected to a computer in Canberra, scientists at the Laos meeting, 8,000 kilometres away, were able to identify an Oriental fruit fly specimen taken from an Australian research collection. Similar to the Queensland fruit fly, the Oriental fruit fly is a high-risk pest endemic to Asia that has so far been kept from Australian shores – aside from those few specimens, long since dead, kept for scientific reference.
Five ASEAN countries – Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – in addition to East Timor, now have remote microscope capability and will form a vital link in Australia’s pre-border security, monitoring pest movements throughout south-east Asia.
The CRC’s remote microscope project support officer Michael Thompson has recently returned from Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, where he has been installing remote microscope equipment at government entomology research laboratories as well as training staff. The equipment has been supplied by the CRC, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), AusAid and through a partnership that will contribute substantially to Australia’s pre-border surveillance.
“We import produce from these countries and if we can identify outbreaks of pests or disease before it leaves these countries we can protect the relevant industries in Australia,” Mr Thompson says.
“For instance, all three countries have different fruit fly species from the ones we have. If these species should establish in Australia it would decimate our fruit industries. We need to be able to identify pests like fruit fly, help our neighbours identify fruit fly, and be able to differentiate their species from our own when they reach our shores, and this network improves our ability to do this.”
Mr Thompson says the cost of entry-level equipment required to join the network is expected to become more affordable in the near future, with a minimum of an internet connection, a computer and a Dino-Lite digital microscope, with models available for less than AU$300.
The network is also operating in New Zealand, with extensions to Canada and the United States being negotiated as part of the Quadrilateral Scientific Collaboration in plant biosecurity.
The United States is particularly interested in using the system for pre-border surveillance in the Caribbean in the same way that Australia is helping to establish a network in south-east Asia.
Researchers in Florida joined a remote microscope session, with others from the Caribbean island of Aruba, Melbourne and the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) in Canberra, using Skype and a Dino-Lite digital microscope to share images of red palm weevil specimens, an exotic pest threat to the United States.
Dr Kong says with these cheap and simple technologies, diagnostic events such as these can be organised easily and quickly to share information and images, connecting experts with non-experts in remote and isolated regions.
“The increasing volume of international trade and people movement is placing greater pressure on quarantine systems. At the same time, the pool of expertise to diagnose new incursions is shrinking. Digital tools are helping us to do more with less and increasing access to information that improves our capacity to identify new pests and disease and respond more quickly,” he says.
Dr Kong’s team has developed system requirements and protocols for the remote microscope network and also developed the CRC’s Plant Biosecurity Toolbox, which is hosted in Museum Victoria’s Pests and Diseases Image Library (PaDIL).
PaDIL contains more than 20,000 detailed images of insects and plant diseases, available publicly through the internet. The website has proven to be a leading international resource for plant and disease identification, with users in more than 190 countries.
In conjunction with PaDIL, the CRC’s Plant Biosecurity Toolbox provides details of pests, the symptoms and damage they cause, and links to information about diagnostic tests to confirm the identity of the pest.
An upgrade of the PaDIL website launched in 2011, included a personalised ‘dashboard’ that provides an entry point for identification requests and store personal search history and identification records. All data relating to identifications is stored in a new portal known as BowerBird, which also provides a control centre for all users of the remote microscope network.
Dr Kong says that through BowerBird users are able to request a session with a relevant plant pest specialist and, using a triage process to assess the urgency of each request, sessions are booked and organised and each session is given its own unique reference code.
Dr Kong says one of the most important elements of this is be the ability to record all sessions for later reference, to provide a chain of evidence for all identifications and to also add to the body of diagnostic knowledge. Logging all remote microscope events together with diagnostic images has helped provide a dynamic picture of pest movement across Australia and even globally.
While the remote microscope network is still continuing to grow in Australia and overseas for the purpose of identifications, it is also growing in importance as a tool to deliver real-time training. With remote microscopy, experts can run training workshops from their laboratories for people in remote areas and, with interactive communication, they can demonstrate identification features of specimens and share images. Participants can keep a personal library of relevant images and a record of conversation for future reference. In this way, experts can share their knowledge with others via remote connections.
In recognition of the innovative work undertaken by the digital diagnostics project, the project has been nominated for a Cooperative Research Centres Association (CRCA) Award for Excellence in Innovation in the category of innovation arising from the application and use of research. The winners will be announced at the CRCA Awards dinner in Brisbane on Wednesday 18 May 2011. We have our fingers crossed for this very deserving project.
