Workshops to develop project ideas

In the lead up to the Plant Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre (PBCRC) starting on 1 July 2012, the CRC has organised a series of Program workshops, which will provide any researcher from a participant organisation the opportunity to be engaged in the development of project ideas.

Each of the PBCRC Program Leaders have outlined below what will be covered in each of the workshops. If you would like more information about the workshops, contact the CRCNPB.

Program 1: Early Warning
Program Leader: Rieks van Klinken

Program 1 is concerned with minimising the risk of serious impact to our agriculture and environment through the arrival of new plant pests and diseases. Only a subset of species has the ability to cause serious impact, so the focus will be on identifying those not yet in Australia, and determining how to best minimise the risks they pose. These risks will be from specific pests and diseases and as yet unidentified threats.

The major objectives for the program are therefore to:

• Identify what pests and diseases pose the greatest threat to Australia, how and where they are likely to enter into Australia, how they are likely to spread once established, under what circumstances they will cause impact, and what that means for a biosecurity system. These risk assessments will consider the potential effects of global changes such as in trade patterns, demographics, anthropogenic climate change, agricultural practices and changing land use patterns. 
• Determine how resources should best be allocated to minimise the threat of new high-impact pests and diseases. This will include developing tools and techniques for evaluating different options for managing biosecurity threats, estimating what level of investments are justified for biosecurity response and from who, and determining where, when and how those investments should be directed. This will be applicable at enterprise, regional, state and national scales.

Program 1 will build on work from the CRCNPB, but will have a greater focus on delivery and adoption, a greater focus on priority research gaps identified during the CRCNPB and the CRC rebid process, and will seek to develop strong links with other programs. The science agenda will acknowledge the complexity of the biosecurity system, the inherent uncertainties and unknowables, and the low probability but high consequence risks that most biosecurity threats pose.

Research impact will be contingent on projects clearly identifying how science will make a substantive contribution to the way the risk of impact of potential new pests and diseases is reduced. To this end delivery and adoption plans will be prepared during the project development phase of each project.

Program 2: Effective Detection and Response
Program Leader: Jane Moran

The aims of this program are to develop tools for surveillance, detection, diagnosis and response. The program will deliver:

• Better diagnostic tools for use in the lab and in the field. 
• More effective and efficient trapping tools. 
• Better tactical surveillance strategies, i.e. if we know what to look for, where to look and when to look (Program 1 outcomes) how do we best deploy our surveillance activities. 
• Cost effective eradication strategies and if possible doing this without destruction.

All projects in Program 2 are expected to cover the entire spectrum from discovery to delivery to the end user, with PhD projects integrated into larger projects within the program.

Program 3: Safe Guarding Trade
Program Leader: Shashi Sharma

The sustainability of Australian plant industries is heavily dependent on access to both international and interstate markets with agricultural plant exports alone worth more than $14b annually.

Program 3 will build on work from the CRCNPB and develop new research initiatives consistent with end-user priorities. The key objective of the Program is to develop and deliver tools, technologies and strategies to safeguard international and interstate markets for grains and horticulture industries. To meet this objective, new project proposals will be developed in the following areas:

• New options for quarantine pest risk mitigation with systems approaches to pest management that will support Australian agribusiness and assist industry meet market requirements.
• Implications of climate change on maintaining area freedom and areas with low pest prevalence essential for interstate and international trade.
• Disinfestation technologies/treatments for grain storage pests.
• Options for more effective use of phosphine fumigation through improved resistance management strategies.
• Alternatives to the use of methyl bromide and sulfuryl fluoride.
• New procedures that improve operational flexibility and, through their deployment, achieve operational efficiencies in the management of key storage pests.

This program will focus on producing outcomes that help to safeguard market access for Australia’s grain and horticulture industries, at a time when global quarantine barriers are increasing and there is greater demand from importing nations for scientific data to support market access and trade.

Program 4: Secure Future
Program Leader: Ruth Wallace

Program 4 will identify the gaps in the social sciences related to biosecurity from three perspectives:

• Community
• Industry
• Government

We will assess the underlying social research questions that could provide stage 1 of the first PBCRC Program 4 Secure Futures research plan.

The workshop will also consider the longer term goals, what would an integrated approach to the social elements of biosecurity look like, what is key, what is unknown and how could this be investigated. This will draw together the threads from the first sessions.

Finally, the workshop will consider how the project outcomes could be applied and evaluated in biosecurity contexts.

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