Following the FP7 call  ‘Development of more efficient risk analysis techniques for pests and pathogens of phytosanitary concern'  (Reference: FP7-KBBE-2007-1), a consortium of European institutions formed to develop a bid. The consortium was christened PRATIQUE. The call seeks to develop the science and provision of pest risk analysis and explore the potential for new techniques, and refine existing tools and management approaches that can be applied to enhance existing pest risk analysis schemes.

Key work will focus on risk assessment issues and will include: identifying and integrating key national and international datasets; exploring new techniques and refining existing tools, especially validation of techniques that assess economic, environmental or social impacts/costs; developing system approaches for pest risk management to analyse and enhance the effectiveness of plant health policy; and developing novel and sustainable pest management strategies with integrated technical support for policy development in the case of emergency situations/pest outbreaks, especially those pests that are difficult to control.

The project will develop sustainable, integrated plant health risk analysis and management strategies. Effective policy making and decision making by governments aimed at predicting and managing plant health risks, will be enhanced through the further development of more effective PRA based on new decision support systems. The bid deadline is 2nd May 2007.

The consortium is composed of:

• Central Science Laboratories (CSL-UK)
• Imperial College (IC-UK)
• Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI-NL)
• Wageningen University (NL)
• BBA (BBA-DE)
• EPPO (EPPO-FR)
• Laboratoire National de la Protection des V駩taux/CIRAD (LNPV-FR / CIRAD-FR)
• CRCNPB (CRC_AUS)
• CABI
• INRA
• University of Bern (UBERN-CH)
• University of Prague/Czech Academy of Science (IBOT_CZ)
• University of Padova (UPAD-IT)
• Lincoln University (BIOP-NZ)
• Plant Protection Institute, Bulgaria (PPI-BG)

I was invited to join following a meeting in the UK and Netherlands in October 2006 and attended the consortium meeting in Paris on 5-6 March. At this meeting I discussed the range and scope of CRCNPB activities and we identified the CRC's Smart Traps activities, the risk analysis activities and some of the impact management activities as being areas of particular interest.

The bid will comprise a series of work packages which will follow the key work listed in the call:

• identifying and integrating key national and international datasets
• exploring new techniques and refining existing tools - especially validation of techniques that assess economic, environmental or social impacts/cost
• developing system approaches for pest risk management to analyse and enhance the effectiveness of plant health policy
• developing novel and sustainable pest management strategies with integrated technical support for policy development in the case of emergency situations/pest outbreaks, especially those pests that are difficult to control.

The work packages are as follows:

• WP1: Assembling the Datasets for EU-wide PRAs
• WP2: Techniques and tools for assessing pest introduction, capturing uncertainty and summarising risk
• WP3: Techniques and tools for assessing impacts
• WP4: Systems Approaches for the Prevention of Pest Entry
• WP5: Decision Support System for Managing Outbreaks
• WP6: Testing, validating and implementing outputs

The bid is in its final stage of development and a copy will be circulated at the next Board meeting.

Location