Production nurseries are encouraged to attend a webinar on exotic leafminers that will be held on Thursday, 16 July 2020, to provide growers with an update on incursion risk, impact, surveillance procedures and management options if incursion occurs.

This webinar forms part of the levy funded ‘Research, Development and Extension program for control, eradication and preparedness of vegetable leafminer’ (MT16004) project, which is led by cesar with support from project partners Plant Health Australia, the University of Melbourne, Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) and AUSVEG.

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A joint-levy funded project is facilitating faster and more accurate screening methods on imported nursery planting stock to allow for the introduction of new genetic material that will help maintain diversity in changing environmental conditions, shoring up the future sustainability of the nursery industry.

‘Improving plant industry access to new genetics through faster and more accurate diagnostics using next generation sequencing’ (MT18005) project, is seeking to improve plant industry access to new genetics by enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of virus detection at post-entry quarantine (PEQ) facilities.

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Growers and production staff are invited to attend a series of pest and disease webinars run by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (QDAF).

These online events aim to enhance the Australian nursery industry’s biosecurity measures by showcasing new pest and disease contingency plans and relaying new and updated information to growers.

QDAF pathologists will run a total of four webinars, two of which are in lieu of the annual face-to-face disease workshops and will look through the lens of Integrated Crop Management (ICM).

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Thursday, 11 June 2020

The levy funded ‘Improving pest management for the nursery industry’ (NY17009) project has moved into the second phase, seeking to perform a cost benefit analysis on the implementation of elements of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program in production nurseries.

The project team at Greenlife Industry Australia have partnered with Biological Services, who will be using their expertise in pests and diseases, crop lifecycle, population thresholds and methods for management, to perform crop monitoring for the project and making recommendations to participating production nurseries.

During this phase, the seven participating production nurseries will begin implementing the four BioSecure HACCP procedures for ‘site surveillance’, ‘crop monitoring’, ‘materials import inspections’ and ‘materials dispatch inspections’ into their businesses.

The BioSecure HACCP procedures employed in this project will inform growers of the pest status within their crops at any given time, allowing for better decision making when selecting the most appropriate IPM management method. More