Our newest participant

K.Scott — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:36:04 +0000

We are delighted to welcome CABI on board as a Supporting Participant of the CRC. Dr Trevor Nicholls, CABI’s Chief Executive Officer officially signed the agreement with Chairman, Professor John Lovett during the course of the Global Biosecurity 2010 conference.

CABI will be a valuable partner in the CRC, providing international linkages that are so important in collaborative research activities. CABI is a not-for-profit science-based development and information organisation with nine centres worldwide. Along with researching and finding solutions to agricultural and environmental problems, CABI are also strongly committed to scientific publishing and improving access to scientific knowledge in these areas.

CABI are also creating a comprehensive global database of plant health, underpinned by its ever-growing collection of the world’s most extensive and trusted agricultural content. This currently comprises six million records in CAB Abstracts, 30,000 pest datasheets from the Crop Protection Compendium, thousands of images, and almost 2,000 distribution maps. These will be augmented with research project findings, book content, sanitary and phytosanitary legislative standards, and open access data from authoritative partners. These include the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Plant Protection Convention, and various national plant protection organisations.

The database will be informed by input from a significant expansion of CABI’s Global Plant Clinic(GPC), working at the national level with plant science organisations, agricultural ministries, and extension systems to create a sustainable local plant healthcare system. The GPC approach of using plant health clinics offers a unique and cost-effective way of raising quality-of-living standards and income levels for poor rural farming communities in developing countries. These groups who need help the most, have historically been the most difficult to reach. The GPC currently has a network of more than 80 regular clinics operating in 10 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Over the next five years CABI plans to expand this to over 400 clinics in 40 countries.

During the Global Biosecurity 2010 conference, Dr Trevor Nicholls said the world today faces an unprecedented challenge to feed a growing population in the face of climate change and water shortage. Yet we still lose up to 40% of the food we grow to plant pests and diseases. If we could reduce these losses we could feed many more people without any extra use of land, water, pesticides or fertilizer.

“Even though plant pests and diseases are likely to spread more rapidly due to trade, travel and climate, there is, today, no systematic global approach to track these outbreaks. By providing relevant content from CABI and respected partners through a focused portal we propose to provide a unique system to track the occurrence and spread of diseases worldwide so that countries like Australia can be alerted to take preventative steps.”

“A current example of the urgent need to track the spread of a plant disease is the emergence of a virulent strain of black stem rust called Ug99. This deadly airborne fungus is on the move and poses a serious threat to wheat production around the world. The fungus has already spread to Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen and there are concerns that the Middle East will be next. Efforts are underway to produce wheat resistant to the fungus, but in the meantime tracking its spread is a priority,” said Dr Nicholls.

You can find out more about CABI’s work by visiting their website.

Image: (source Di Harris photographics)

Professor John Lovett and the CRC's newest participant CABI representative , Chief Executive Officer, Dr Trevor Nicholls.

CRC for Plant Biosecurity - Trevor Nicholls

Our newest participant