The Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity delivers short courses and workshops for staff and students working in plant biosecurity or biosecurity-associated industries, to improve and upgrade Australia's capacity in plant biosecurity.

Course participants come from State Agencies, private agronomy and landcare companies, grower and farmer associations, nurseries, local councils, and other plant biosecurity-associated industries.Topics include surveillance, risk analysis and diagnostic technologies, and are delivered by specialists within each field.

 

Current workshops:

Grain Storage and Biosecurity - A professional development training program for supervisors and operators in grain storage [1]

11 - 13 April 2012

Wagga Wagga, New South Wales

Participants, growers and anyone with an interest in stored grain are encouraged to enrol for the grain storage and biosecurity course. The course has been developed by Charles Sturt University in conjunction with key stakeholders from Viterra, GrainCorp and CBH group, with input from Plant Health Australia and Murdoch University Stored Grains Associate Professor YongLin Ren.

The course builds on the Grain Quality Protection Industry Course which was first offered in 1990 but has been substantially revised to incorporate industry best practice regarding grain biosecurity, stored grain pests and fumigation requirements. For further information please see the course brochure [2].

LIMITED PLACES ARE AVAILABLE  

 

Archived workshops:

ID Tools for Biosecurity workshop  [3]

25 - 27 May 2010

Melbourne, Victoria 

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International Russian Wheat Aphid Worshop [4]

26 - 28 April 2010

Singapore

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Enhanced Risk Analysis Tools: Pest Prioritisation Stakeholder Workshop

June 2009

The CRCNPB project Enhanced Risk Analysis [5]Tool has successfully combined bioeconomic pest impact simulation models with a deliberative decision-facilitation approach to help horticultural industries prioritise relevant biosecurity threats. This workshop showcased these technologies through a practical pest prioritisation exercise.

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Technologies Enhancing Biosecurity Preparedness

June 2009

The CRCNPB project Early Warning of Pre-Emergent Plant Pests uses artificial neural network technologies to analyse global pest species distributions and rank them according to likelihood that they will become established in Australia. This workshop demonstrated the importance of artificial neural network technologies in ranking likelihood of entry and establishment for global pest species and explored future uses of these and related technologies to support biosecurity risk management decisions.

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International Master Class in Plant Biosecurity [6]

June 2008

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Karnal bunt diagnostics 

March 2008

The current diagnostic protocol for Karnal bunt involves the tentative identification of the spores based on morphology followed by germination of the spores and a molecular protocol to confirm the identity.  Microscopy and spore germination are very rate limiting and labour intensive. This workshop demonstrated the new PCR methods that have been developed to improve the problems associated with the previous protocol.

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PaDIL

December 2007

PaDIL [7]uses images rather than keys to help recognise exotic and endemic pests and is at being used by a broad audience. PaDIL has a wide coverage of pest species (1,000 at present, including EPPs) ranging from timber, stored foods pests to horticultural and marine pests and the geographical pest coverage is world wide. These workshops will provided an overview and introduction on How to Use PaDIL, demonstrating the features that the library has to offer and its potential use in raising awareness of emergency plant pests within industry.

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Evaluation of surveillance systems: the use of non-survey data sources to demonstrate freedom from disease

This course was aimed at being able to describe, interpret and apply a general method for analysing the (negative) results of all types of surveillance process for detection of disease. Learning outcomes included the ability to analyse surveillance data for demonstrating freedom from disease, for comparing the efficiencies of different surveillance processes in detecting disease, for designing surveillance for disease control programmes, and for economic assessment of surveillance activities.

Run with Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases [8] in July 2006

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Applied quantitative risk analysis in agriculture

Run in August 2006, this course covered basic principles of quantitative risk analysis in agriculture and the most important risk modelling principles, methods and techniques available.  The course focussed on how to conduct accurate and effective quantitative risk analyses, including best practices of risk modelling, selecting the appropriate distribution, using data and expert opinion, and avoiding common mistakes.

Run with Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases [8]