A $13.5 million, five-year co-investment through the National Grains Diagnostics and Surveillance Initiative is being led by government scientists at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute (EMAI), with work also underway at the Wagga Wagga, Tamworth and Orange Agricultural Institutes.
The project aims to address critical gaps in grains biosecurity.
NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), in partnership with Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), is creating new early warning and molecular diagnostic tools which are essential to identify and reduce the impact of exotic biosecurity threats.
The work, which is targeting 16 exotic grain pathogens and 62 exotic grain pests currently not in Australia, aims to prevent billions of dollars damage to the state’s agriculture sector if there were future domestic outbreaks of these threats and includes:
• the development of new tools which will increase the number of samples that can be tested within a given time; and,
• near field diagnostics that will speed up pathology results to inform management decisions, such as when and where to spray crops to control pests and disease.
Targeted pests and pathogens causing significant damage internationally include wheat blast, exotic fusarium wilt diseases and hessian fly.
Exotic pathogen and pest incursions can damage crops, increase production costs and halt exports with the annual cost of control and impacts on trade conservatively estimated to be $100.4 million per incursion event.
