CRC for Plant Biosecurity - newsletter

CRCNPB published in Success Through Innovation newsletter

CRICHTONA — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 05:05:34 +0000

Two CRCNPB projects have featured in the CRC Programs latest newsletter - Success Through Innovation.

The first CRCNPB article in the newsletter is about Australian scientists achieving a world‑first advance in post‑harvest storage of grain and other crops, by starving pests of oxygen.

While the second focuses on Australian and US scientists uniting to pioneer a new approach to controlling crop pests through drastic pruning - in particular in the viticulture industry - that can help avoid some of the heartbreak, economic loss and industry disruption that goes with traditional eradication.

The articles can be read in full along with a number of other success stories from CRC's in the summer edition of Success Through Innovation.

The Leaflet October 2010

K.Scott — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:15:57 +0000

The Leaflet September 2010

VANMEURSA — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:23:36 +0000

The hard work has paid off but we are still not there yet, read about our progress with the rebid and other CRC news in the September issue of the Leaflet.

Russian wheat aphid experts convene in Singapore to safeguard Australian crops

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:48:55 +0000

Scientists from across the globe convened last week at a workshop focused on the Russian wheat aphid; a pest that could be devastating to Australia’s barley and wheat crops.

The workshop was held from April 26 – 28 in Singapore and attended by 27 of the world’s top wheat aphid scientists. Our chairman, Professor John Lovett and Murdoch University’s Associate Professor Mehmet Cakir hosted the two and a half day workshop.

The CRC along with our participant organisation Grains Research and Development Corporation sponsored the workshop, while Murdoch University and CSIRO offered their expertise in developing the scientific program.

Australia is currently free of the Russian wheat aphid and through international collaboration this workshop provided scientists with the opportunity to continue safeguarding Australia’s crops from this serious and harmful pest. An incursion of the Russian wheat aphid would be devastating to Australia's $5 billion wheat industry.

A wide range of presentations were given throughout the workshop including CRC researchers, Dr Owain Edwards, Dr Susan Fuller and Dr Gerald Reeck. CRC presentations were based on Russian wheat aphid research from project CRC40006 and PhD project CRC60111.

CRC40006 led by CSIRO’s Dr Owain Edwards is focused on research involving genomic sequencing of the salivary glands of the aphids, in an attempt to map how they evolve to secrete new forms of proteins that wheat plants no longer recognise as precursors to attack. QUT’s Dr Susan Fuller is supervising Bo Zhang, our PhD candidate based in China. Dr Fuller gave a presentation on Bo’s behalf, discussing the invasion genetics of Russian wheat aphid in western China and worldwide. Dr Gerald Reeck is also working on the PhD project with Dr Fuller and Ms Zhang. He presented work on the characterisation of proteins secreted in aphid saliva.

The international workshop provided an opportunity for scientists to present their research, as well as the opportunity for further discussion and collaboration. To enhance these networking opportunities, the program also included two social functions, a trip to Singapore Zoo and a formal dinner held at the Orchard Hotel.

The Leaflet May 2010

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:09:03 +0000

John Austen

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:23:35 +0000

My name is John Austen and my role at CRC for National Plant Biosecurity is Project Officer.

I am originally from Hobart and the thing I miss the most is eating fresh fish on the waterfront.

Living in Canberra is relaxing

My favourite or ideal holiday destination is the Canadian Rockies because of the amazing mountains and lakes.

In my spare time, I enjoy football umpiring and bike riding.

My favourite movie is Grand Torino because it demonstrates the transformation that is possible in people.

At the moment I am reading The Death of Dalziel by Reginald Hill.

If money was no option, I would fund a Tasmanian AFL team.

A quality I would most like to be remembered for is being good humoured.

Indigenous communities managing biosecurity risks

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:36:24 +0000

Indigenous communities of Northern Australia have a long-standing connection in plant biosecurity issues through culture and tradition to the land and sea.

As part of our research project ‘An Indigenous community and local knowledge-based model to manage harmful plant pests and diseases, CRC70138’ in Northern Australia and Eastern Indonesia, we are committed to biosecurity management with Aboriginal people, as well as the relevant government agencies. This is achieved through supporting enterprise development, meaning Aboriginal people can remain on country and in homelands.

Biosecurity management through enterprise (contracts with groups like Caring for Country, Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service and other resource based industries) enables a source of employment for Aboriginal people which provides economic, cultural, social and environmental sustainability.

Our research has identified three key features of partnerships that support the community based management of plant biosecurity. Firstly, there is a need to understand the way local communities interact with policy and industry. Secondly, the potential of enterprise development in engaging local communities in the long term is discussed. Finally, the research has developed a training framework to endorse cultural and Western knowledge about plant biosecurity for the community management of biosecurity.

There is a significant opportunity to proactively work with local communities both in northern Australia and south-east Asia to develop and implement novel threat mitigation strategies that bridge diverse knowledge systems and their underlying perspectives.

The successful identification, management and eradication of plant biosecurity incursions across the extensive and sparsely populated Northern Australian coastline is a significant challenge. Plant incursions include weeds such Mimosa (Mimosa pigra) and Parkinsonia (Parkinsonia aculeate) which threaten large areas of southern Arnhem Land. These incursions impact on Aboriginal people's lives as they compete with, and displace, wetlands’ fauna and flora.

The flora and fauna are important food sources. Without access to these sources people consume poorer quality commercial food products, which impacts community members’ health outcomes. In addition, weed eradication work undertaken by Aboriginal people has implications for the Australian agriculture industry that would otherwise need to expend considerably more than the current $4 million per year to address production losses and manage costs (Altman, Kerins, Fogarty and Webb, 2008).

Effective partnerships between Indigenous land managers and relevant government agencies have developed to undertake biosecurity management in these remote regions. This biosecurity surveillance, reporting and management work has the potential to be developed to support economic, cultural and social sustainability in remote Indigenous communities. This has been recognised by the Commonwealth governments unit natural resource management initiatives established through the Caring the Country program. This program integrates delivery of the Australian government's previous natural resource management programs, including the Natural Heritage Trust, the National Landcare Program, the Environmental Stewardship Program and the Working on Country Indigenous land and sea ranger program. The potential for stabilising and extending these programs and securing the environmental, agricultural industries’ and Indigenous people's futures is being realised through connection to emerging enterprises and existing areas of expertise.

Embedding plant biosecurity at a local and national level draws together the principles of community management of plant biosecurity in relation to leadership, governance and change. This proactive approach to managing harmful plant pests and diseases, works through social partnerships in learning across community, policy, regional and national boundaries. These partnerships connect biosecurity management and implementation with existing economic, cultural and social structures and so increase chances of sustainability. In Australia, this strategy has been developed to respond to the changing nature of work and economic viability of Indigenous people in remote and regional communities. This is responsive to recent national policy changes in relation to Indigenous community and workforce development and Indigenous people’s desire for economic independence.

Leading the CRC’s research component of community engagement with Indigenous communities, Charles Darwin’s University’s, Ruth Wallace recently coordinated a visit in conjunction with Lhaynupuy Homelands Association and Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife.

Both Laynhapuy and Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife are keen for people to learn from others and to see the environmental threats for their community and culture. Charles Darwin University is undertaking strengths based learning activities as part of the Conservation and Land Management Training Package that encourage connection to country and others’ experiences and meet the industry standard. This training also helping people manage their country so they don’t lose culture.

During the trip, the team recorded the range of skills developed and demonstrated by Indigenous rangers in order to make teaching resources in Yolngu Mathu and English. These will be used to make information resources to teach young Aboriginal people and other rangers about the role of rangers, identifying plant incursions and the value of being a ranger as a long term career. These will be used with a range of training and knowledge management resources being developed by ranger groups across Northern Australia made with Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people.

ABC’s Stateline recently aired footage of the visit, highlighting to the audience the important roles the rangers and Indigenous communities play in helping to keep Australia free from harmful plant pests and diseases. You can view the program online.

Photo caption: Rangers from Laynhapuy Yirralka Homelands Association Inc and NT Parks and Wildlife survey the extent of weed invasion

Biodiversity and biosecurity – you can’t have one without the other

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:25:25 +0000

In February’s edition of The Leaflet, my armchair comments closed with a note on the imminence of ‘Global Biosecurity 2010’, the international conference which exceeded our expectations in terms of both quantity (numbers of delegates) and quality (an acclaimed range of presentations). We all had our favourites but to me the stand-out was the number of industry representatives who commented on how well the CRCNPB presented itself. Well done to everyone!

I’m going to continue the global theme but cheat a little in this article. Readers may know that I serve as a member of the Board of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), with my affiliation being as Chairman of the CRCNPB. When I make presentations about either the CRCNPB or the GCDT I invariably point out that biodiversity and biosecurity are inextricably inter-twined. You simply can’t have one without the other. The following words are from the latest communiqué from Executive Director of the GCDT, Dr Cary Fowler. The full version may be found on the GCDT website.

'Of Pandas and Peas

Days after the international community failed to establish legally binding measures to halt climate change, the UN launched the International Year of Biodiversity. Scientists predict climate change will directly imperil one-fourth of the Earth’s species.

In the coming months, you can expect to hear about charismatic mega-fauna - whales, tigers, gorillas, pandas, etc - as well as the diversity of species found in the oceans and tropical forests. You’ll be exposed to the organizations devoted to saving them. Most of all you will be told about the threat of extinction. The issue of “endangered species” has dominated the biodiversity narrative since the 1980s when the term entered into common usage.

To many people, “biodiversity” is almost synonymous with the word “nature”, and “nature” brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species. It includes not only wild species and their diversity, but domesticated species and their diversity.

It is the diversity within species that keeps species going.

People and Plants

Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants.

This diversity, this cornucopia of genes, has arisen and persisted in large part because of the ancient and ongoing tie between peoples and plants. Farmers and more formally trained plant breeders use the diversity found in wheat and other crops to improve the yields, disease and pest resistance of the varieties in use today. The process of varietal improvement is continuous.

Nevertheless, when we think about biodiversity, we rarely think about food.

What is it that makes one cuisine distinct from another? Which foods and spices are strongly associated with a particular cuisine? What makes Thai food “Thai” as opposed to Italian? It doesn’t necessarily have to do with where the crops were originally domesticated. So many key ingredients are immigrants!

The number of crops we use for food is impressive enough, but the diversity within those crops is particularly notable for both agronomic and cultural reasons. Like other biodiversity, however, it is endangered.

Plants and animals are not waiting for the next IPCC report to document global warming. Hundreds of scientific articles document the movement of wild species in response to climate change. But the disturbing fact is that many aren’t moving fast enough, and can’t. Others simply have no corridors of escape. All are potential climate change road kill.

Agricultural crops face a similar dilemma.As with pandas and many other wild species, the maize and sorghum varieties grown by subsistence farmers in Africa cannot and will not easily relocate. And staying where they are is hardly an adaptive strategy that inspires confidence. Even if such crop varieties were to survive, what would become of the farmers hit with devastating drops in production due to climate change?

Seed banks with their vast collections of crop diversity constitute a cultural corridor, a bridge through time that will help enable crops to adapt to climate change. The biodiversity that seed banks protect may not inspire our empathy as easily as pandas, but its loss would be catastrophic for many, many species.'

In context of the closing remark, a notable first has recently occurred. The Board of CIMMYT (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo) met in Canberra over several days in early April. The international gene bank for wheat and maize, CIMMYT has been a vital source of material for Australian plant breeders. Australia has been a strong supporter of the international centres – through bodies such as Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) - and has provided key personnel to a number of Boards. This visit recognises these vital linkages.

And to return to my ‘global biodiversity/biosecurity’ theme, CIMMYT is a key player in providing genes in the battle against the threat of wheat stem rust strain Ug99, one of the major global biosecurity threats of the moment.

Researching fruit fly in Europe

VANMEURSA — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:42:34 +0000

In July 2009, CRC project leader, Associate Professor Tony Clarke, QUT based CRC post-doctoral fellow Dr Mark Schutze and Lincoln University’s Dr Karen Armstrong were three of only 11 people worldwide invited to participate in an international fruit fly consultants meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN/FAO).

Following this meeting, Dr Mark Schutze was invited back to Vienna to conduct cross-mating and developmental trials on four different fruit fly species. Mark left Australia in early April to begin his six months research and will be based in the Entomology Section of the UN/FAO IAEA Seibersdorf laboratories, located about 45 minutes from Vienna, Austria.

Travelling to Europe is not entirely unfamiliar territory for Mark as he has a German family background, and is pleased to note that this provides an added advantage of having relatives in Europe! To prepare for his trip, Mark brushed up on his German language skills by crashing through a six month course at the University of Queensland last semester. Despite these modest advantages, Mark says the prospect of six months in Austria remains as daunting as it is exciting.

Mark’s not the only one who has had to make the long journey to Vienna. To assist with his research, fruit fly species from south-east Asia and Suriname in South America are being shipped to the research laboratories. The experiments on these flies are an important component of resolving species boundaries between closely related and taxonomically challenging pest fruit flies of the Bactrocera dorsalis species complex.

The work Mark is undertaking in Vienna forms a key component of the research he is conducting as part of the CRC project he is employed on; in that the problem is being addressed in a holistic way. The live-insect trials on the Asian and South American species will be directly linked with genetic work being undertaken by Deb Hailstones at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute (NSW) and Karen Armstrong in New Zealand, together with morphological and morphometric data Mark has been compiling in Brisbane. Once together, this project will provide us with our best chance at resolving boundaries for the target species.

While Mark’s visit to Austria is to specifically work towards the CRC project, the work is intimately tied to an international effort to understand fruit fly cryptic species complexes. The international project, initiated by the IAEA, similarly focuses on resolving cryptic fruit fly species complexes but from a Sterile Insect Technique perspective. Coupled with the work in Austria and in Australia, there is now a worldwide effort to cooperate in understanding these systems. Researchers from regions such as Asia, South America, Europe, New Zealand, and North America are now involved in the broader IAEA cooperative research project (of which Associate Professor Tony Clarke of QUT and Karen Armstrong of Lincoln University are also involved with).

Mark says that besides getting the laboratory work knocked over, being placed in the IAEA laboratories in the centre of Europe presents enormous opportunities not available at home.

“The labs themselves are a tremendous mix of international researchers from all over the globe, so it will be a great opportunity to exchange ideas and to develop intellectually. Additionally, there are European conferences, seminars, and universities that I hope to attend and present at which ordinarily I would not be able to given the expenses involved in travelling to and from Europe and Australia”, he said.

We congratulate Mark on this outstanding opportunity and wish him all the best with his research. We look forward to catching up with Mark on his return and keeping our readers up-to-date with his trip.

Photo caption: Dr Mark Schutze with one of his fruit fly traps

Strategy to manage phosphine resistance

VANMEURSA — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:56:43 +0000

Protecting the Australian grains industry from new pest and disease threats is a major focus of our research. Projects range from an analysis of insect genetics to determine how chemical resistance evolves, to pest monitoring via mobile phone networks; all protecting domestic food production and the $5 billion grain export industry.

Phosphine resistance among stored grain insect pests is a major focus of our Post-Harvest Integrity Research program, which includes projects reviewing phosphine application techniques to improve effectiveness, new fumigation protocols in response to identified resistant insect populations, genetic research to identify resistance mechanisms, and most recently, research on insect ecology to support resistance management tactics.

Phosphine is central to pest management in the Australian grain industry and its continued effectiveness is essential to the sustainability of grain biosecurity and market access for Australian grains. In the past 10-15 years, resistance to phosphine in target insect pests has increased in both frequency and strength such that it now threatens effective control.

In response, and as an initiative of the National Working Party on Grain Protection, Dr Pat Collins, our Post-Harvest Integrity Research program leader has worked with government and industry to develop a publication providing strategic guidance to manage insect resistance to phosphine in the Australian grain industry.

The strategy was developed in consultation with the Australian grain industry to ensure that practical and commercial constraints inherent to this industry were accommodated without loss of the resistance management aim. The strategy applies to all sectors and is consistent with current best practice integrated pest management. However, the strategy is voluntary, and success will depend on industry commitment and widespread compliance. Where successful, these strategies will limit the spread and impact of resistance but not eradicate it.

To ensure this information is readily available to the grains industry, the strategy has recently been made available on Grain Trade Australia’s website. It is also available on our website.