Biosecurity is all about safeguarding Australia’s ability to trade fresh produce by protecting our plants from pests and diseases. Biosecurity is an integral part of protecting Australia’s $16 billion horticultural industry and ensuring the sector continues to grow.

Hort Innovation’s Trade & Biosecurity R&D Team manages a range of investments that focus on ensuring the Australian horticulture sector is prepared for biosecurity risks and equipped to manage pests and diseases. The team covers key biosecurity areas such as market access, integrated pest and disease management, regulatory affairs and crop protection, as well as the cross- RDC Plant Biosecurity Research Initiative.

Here are some examples of biosecurity-related investments that Hort Innovation has underway to protect Australia’s trade reputation by detecting and managing various pests and diseases…

PREVENTING EXOTIC PLANT PESTS FROM ENTERING AUSTRALIA

The first line of defense is preventing exotic plant pests from entering Australia in the first place. Hort Innovation has a range of investments in preparedness to do just that.

Improving access to new genetics through faster and more accurate diagnostics

Rapid and safe access to new plant genetic stocks is crucial for plant primary industries to remain profitable, sustainable, and internationally competitive. Currently, new plant material entering Australia can spend up to three years in post-entry quarantine facilities undergoing pathogen testing.

A diagnostic platform that is scalable, robust, accurate, and rapid is needed for post-entry quarantine to expedite phytosanitary screening and allow imported plants to move through the quarantine process potentially more quickly.

From 2018 to 2023, Hort Innovation worked in partnership with quarantine agencies in Australia and New Zealand to develop an end-to-end quality assurance program and standard operating procedures. Efforts were made to ensure the program harmonised with international best practices, to enable the adoption of high-throughput sequencing technology (also known as next generation sequencing) for phytosanitary screening of exotic pests in post-entry quarantine (PEQ) facilities. The technology allows the PEQ team to search for many plant pathogens in a single test, greatly improving efficiency and potentially reducing testing costs.

This new capability will enhance Australia’s biosecurity system, safeguarding domestic plant industries from exotic pests and enabling plant industries to gain accelerated access to new plant genetics to facilitate their access to high-value market opportunities.

Biosecurity preparedness for the citrus industry

The citrus industry faces a number of significant exotic pest threats that have the potential to affect production as well as market access. These include Huanglongbing and its psyllid vectors, citrus canker and citrus variegated chlorosis (Xylella).

Hort Innovation is working to bolster biosecurity capacity and technical capability for the Australian citrus industry through a range of preparedness, response and awareness activities.

The project involves a nationally coordinated surveillance program for the early detection of high-priority pests and provides industry data to support industry market access and trade.

This project employs the National Citrus Biosecurity Manager who is responsible for working with growers, researchers, industry bodies and the Australian and State Government agencies to coordinate citrus surveillance and biosecurity activities across the country. A key element of the coordinator’s work is ensuring that growers, consultants, other industry participants and members of the public are more aware of, and prepared for, biosecurity and exotic pests of citrus.

A review of the Citrus Biosecurity Plan (which was developed in 2015) will also occur under this project. The review will assess and confirm high priority pests of the citrus industry and therefore which exotic pests should be the target of biosecurity preparedness, surveillance and diagnostic activities.

REDUCING THE IMPACT OF PLANT PESTS ALREADY PRESENT IN AUSTRALIA

Integrated pest and disease management is a critical part of the horticulture sector’s biosecurity efforts on home soil. Keeping pest pressure low feeds into confidence in the supply chain that end-point disinfestation will be successful, reduces the need for some pest control chemicals to ensure fresh produce is pest-free when leaving the farm. This helps growers meet increasingly stringent Maximum Residue Limits (MRL’s) for pesticides.

Facilitating timely and effective pest management in the macadamia industry

Hort Innovation is working hand-in-hand with the macadamia industry to help growers make timely and effective pest management decisions.

The program has three key areas of work:

1. Delivering ecological studies across the geographical range of the industry in Queensland and New South Wales. These studies will provide information on occurrence patterns of pests of concern, their biology and population dynamics, as well as pest interactions with natural enemies, macadamia phenology, and environmental factors.
2. Building on existing pest monitoring protocols and developing decision support systems, including the development of a macadamia agro-ecosystem model integrated with economic analyses to consider the efficacy of various integrated pest management strategies, chemical and biological. It will establish evidence-based damage thresholds, tolerance levels and benchmarks of the return from control measures using the Economic Injury Level (EIL) and Economic Threshold (ET) framework.
3. Improving our understanding of biological control of macadamia pests. Field studies will identify existing natural enemies of all the pests of concern, assessing the seasonal abundance and diversity of the natural enemies under changing environmental conditions and resource availability.

Supporting grower access to safe and effective crop protection

Hort Innovation supports growers’ essential access to safe and effective crop protection products through levy projects, grant funding and additional activities.

To help horticulture industries identify gaps in existing control options for pests, weeds and diseases, Hort Innovation funds Strategic Agrichemical Review Process (SARP) research.

Each industry’s SARP report assists in directing ongoing efforts to ensure the availability of, and access to, effective chemical controls for the industries to address those needs and gaps. This may relate to pursuing chemical registration with agrichemical companies, or minor use permits with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).

The SARP process involves industry consultation and desktop studies to...

• Assess the importance of the diseases, insects and weeds that can affect each industry
• Evaluate the availability and effectiveness of pesticides in the control of these plant pests
• Determine any gaps in the current pest control strategy
• Identify suitable new or alternative pesticides to address the gaps.

ASSURING OUR INTERNATIONAL TRADING PARTNERS THAT OUR PRODUCE IS PEST-FREE

Australia’s horticultural sector exports $2.7B worth of produce each year – that makes up nearly 17 per cent of the total sector. To ensure we have continued access to overseas markets, and gain entry to new ones, we need to assure our trading partners that our produce is free of pests and diseases. In fact, this is the first stage of the process before trade negotiations can even begin.

Here are some examples of investments Hort Innovation has underway to support the industry gain technical market access, including our recently announced $130M Fresh and Secure Trade Alliance.

Bolstering Australia’s produce reputation

While Aussie produce is renowned for having stringent biosecurity practices along all stages of the production and supply chains, state and territories have differing requirements for interstate trade when it comes to pests and diseases, which we refer to as phytosanitary conditions.

A Hort Innovation investment led by CSIRO in partnership with all Australian State and Territory Governments is working closely with Australia’s domestic biosecurity regulators to strengthen our science-backed approach to managing these phytosanitary risks, making it easier for growers to conduct safe cross-border trade.

As part of the four-year effort, researchers will work closely with all governments to develop and refine a fit-for-purpose ‘toolkit’ that can be used to improve state-level decision-making about biosecurity risks and how these are best managed. The tools will also underpin analyses to support international market access negotiations.

This toolkit will provide Australian growers and exporters who are already effectively managing their production chains to minimise pests and diseases, a way to demonstrate their fruit, vegetables and nuts present a low biosecurity risk. The project will build on the Australian industry’s already excellent practices in this, facilitate better use of data in management of plant biosecurity risks, and will include new and emerging technologies such as optical grading and automated pest surveillance.

Historic $130M trade alliance to supercharge Aussie horticulture exports

Hort Innovation recently announced the largest and most ambitious trade initiative in Australian horticulture industry with a host of partners signing on to an historic $130 million program, the Fresh and Secure Trade Alliance (FASTA).

The eight-year program will see key Aussie export stakeholders and authorities joining forces to help protect and grow Australia’s horticultural exports.

As part of the program, FASTA will also bring a host of biosecurity initiatives that will solidify Australia’s strong pest-management reputation for years to come.

Insect pests are a major challenge for Australia’s horticultural producers as they impact production and domestic and international trade. Before new trade can commence, trading partners require evidence that Australia’s horticulture exports are insect pest free.

FASTA’s research program is focused on two areas:

1. Delivering robust and timely datasets to underpin market access negotiations: State and Territory governments will work together to standardise their approach to collecting phytosanitary, or pest and disease management, data. This data demonstrates that Australia’s produce is pest-free while also ensuring the impact of phytosanitary treatments on fruit quality will be minimised. These datasets will be used to open new export markets for Australian produce, and improve conditions to existing ones.
   
   
2. Increasing understanding about fruit fly and other key pests: A multi-discipline, multi-organisational research team of over 70 scientists from across Australia will be assembled to test new technologies for tracking pests, trapping pests and reducing pest pressure. Through the eight-year program, this will increase Australia’s research capabilities in pest management research and facilitate world-class research.