Protecting our groves: the olive industry biosecurity project (OL23001)

What is it all about?

This project is maintaining and building a strong biosecurity system for the olive industry by improving preparedness at both an industry and grove level and building capability to respond to exotic pests.

Challenge

The current Olive Biosecurity Plan, Version 2.0, was published in 2016 and is now due for review to ensure the pests that pose the greatest threat to the industry are identified and plans to improve preparedness and response capability are implemented.

If one or more exotic pests become established in Australian olive production regions, their presence has the potential to increase production costs through additional management treatments. An incursion of an exotic pest risks the viability of producers and associated businesses.

Response

Through this project, the development and implementation of a new Biosecurity Plan will assist the industry in identifying and adopting current and potential methodologies and technologies in pest and disease management while highlighting areas for future investment in areas such as biosecurity RD&E, diagnostics, communication and biosecurity related capacity and capability.

Biosecurity planning undertaken within this project provides a mechanism for the olive industry to collaborate with governments and other stakeholders to assess current biosecurity practices and future biosecurity needs. Identifying, prioritising, and managing key biosecurity risks is critical to implementing industry biosecurity preparedness activities.

Benefit

This program will deliver a new biosecurity plan for the Australian olive industry (Version 3.0, 2025), providing a framework for improved biosecurity preparedness at an industry and grove level. This plan will enable the Australian olive industry to:

• Identify the exotic pests which pose the highest threat to olive growers.
• Develop mitigation activities to reduce the biosecurity threat, including farm-level activities and surveillance and diagnostic activities.
• Improve current biosecurity capacity and capability within the sector.