IN SPITE of a rise in exotic plant pest incursions, the Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) is confident it has the framework to control any biosecurity issues through its CropSafe program.
Conceived in 2006, launched in 2007 and independently evaluated in 2008, CropSafe has now become a fixture, and is a model for other states - and industries – to use in the effort to prevent or minimise pests and diseases.
The program uses an agreement between DPI and associated agribusinesses to identify pests and diseases in crop and to target a timely response.
John Taylor, project manager for plant biosecurity with the DPI, said he believed the results of the project had been encouraging, in that there have been no detected exotic plant pest incursions to date.
“We have a network of over 100 very experienced agronomists continually looking for new pests and diseases, so we can be far more confident that our grain crops are free of exotic pests.”
Mr Taylor says CropSafe has also provided important side-benefits, in the area of quality assurance in marketing.
“Industry is now far better placed to provide assurance to its customers about the absence of certain pests and diseases.
“This allows claims of area freedom and helps access to markets.
Preventing pests and diseases is vital to the Victorian plant-based agriculture sector, as they could harm the $3.2 billion return agriculture provides to the State’s economy every year, with grains alone earning $1 billion in export income.
Mr Taylor said that CropSafe’s success hinged on a united approach from both government and private sectors.
“To shield industry from the many hundreds of exotic pests and diseases, we had to get the ‘buy-in’ of the commercial sector and private agronomists.
“While industry has a very strong stewardship culture, we offered pest and disease identification training and no-cost laboratory diagnostics for submitted samples.
“We also streamlined sample receival, analysis, reporting back and record-keeping; individual agronomists are emailed results and the whole network receives a monthly update on disease occurrence and trends”
“The concept at work is that experienced agronomists are highly skilled in identifying existing pests and diseases, therefore are well placed to spot anything new or unusual.
They filter out the common pests and send unknowns on for further analysis” Mr Taylor said.
