Plant biosecurity education and training in Australia

Plant Biosecurity is a set of measures designed to protect a crop, crops or a sub-group of crops from emergency plant pests at national, regional and individual farm levels. Australia is relatively free from many of the plant pests and pathogens that seriously impact agricultural and horticultural industries in other countries. This gives Australia a valuable competitive advantage in terms of securing market access and maintaining lower production costs through the absence of many plant pests commonly found overseas. To sustain that advantage into the future, Australian plant industries need the support of world-class plant biosecurity science and education. The Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity (CRCNPB) plays a vital role in enhancing the scientific effort to enable Australian plant industries to pre-empt and, therefore, diminish the economic, social and environmental impact of emerging plant pathogens. The CRCNPB has a strong commitment to the training of high quality PhD students and postdoctoral scientists, providing the nucleus of Australia’s future plant biosecurity capacity. CRCNPB provides regular training courses and workshops for our students, staff and scientists already working in the plant biosecurity field.
The CRCNPB is involved with the development of a national postgraduate curriculum in plant biosecurity, which aims to graduate students with a Graduate Certificate, Diploma or Masters in Plant Biosecurity. We also have a very popular primary and secondary school education program. Essentially we are training new and existing scientists and raising awareness of plant biosecurity issues at all levels from industry, through to the general public.