The Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity started operating in November 2005 in recognition of the need to strengthen the plant biosecurity scientific capacity of Australia.

Our head office is located in Canberra where we centrally coordinate plant biosecurity research across all Australian states and territories. We have an extensive collaborative network of researchers and educators from 24 participating organisations representing industry, universities, state and Australian government.

A key strength of our CRC is the involvement of our participants who are, in many cases, end-users of research results. This ensures maximum benefit and impact in the delivery of project outputs, development of new products and services and capture of intellectual property.

We aim to provide leadership in the development, execution and delivery of plant biosecurity research to:

• safeguard Australia's plant industries
• ensure food security for Australian consumers, and
• improve market access for agricultural exporters.

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The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program is an Australian Government Initiative.

The CRC program supports end-user driven research collaborations to address the major challenges facing Australia. Australia’s network of CRCs operates across all sectors of Australia’s economy and society.

Further information about the CRC program is available from www.crc.gov.au [1].

Welcome to our world!

Chairman, Professor John Lovett [2]

Welcome to our website! Like the web, the world of biosecurity continues to grow fast. Something of a paradox, really, because it's the shrinking world - a world where faster and more frequent travel and transport of people and products is making biosecurity threats increasingly more immediate.

Web-based technologies, in diagnostics, for example, are one way of helping us to keep one step ahead of incursions of pests which, potentially, could be devastating to our export and domestic plant industries. The web is also a great medium for communication, which can keep not just scientists but everyone concerned with biosecurity matters abreast of current happenings.

While biosecurity is certainly a business for professionals we, at the CRCNPB, are very conscious that the community, at large, is affected by the negative effects of biosecurity.  The community is also a potentially huge resource of ‘eyes and ears' that can observe and report to authorities unusual ‘beasts' in the environment.

No question. Biosecurity is an issue for everyone. And as plant biosecurity is a truly global challenge it can only be dealt with by the maximum cooperation possible between agencies and institutions in Australia and around the world.

Biosecurity is one topic where cooperation, not competition, is to everyone's advantage. So, yes, it's welcome to our website but, more importantly, ‘Welcome to our world'.