NGI Updates

Friday, 5 November 2020

Serpentine leafminer has been detected infesting field-grown vegetables in western Sydney in October 2020.

These flies in the genus Liriomyza pose significant risk to Australia’s horticulture sector, and growers are urged to be vigilant with monitoring and implement rigorous plant protection protocols to reduce the risk of further infestation.

Current data suggests this leafminer has 365 host plant species from 49 plant families, including vegetables (cucurbits, tomatoes, chillies, brassicas, lettuce, etc), ornamentals (gerberas, roses, dahlia, chrysanthemums, petunias, violas, etc) and many common weed species.

Plants damaged by this pest commonly suffer reduced yield and growth, and in some cases are completely destroyed.

Serpentine leafminer is widely distributed across the Americas, Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe, and has shown that it’s able to quickly develop insecticide resistance, making it difficult to control.

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Thursday, 5 November 2020

Hort Innovation has released its Annual Fund Reports, mapping out where levy-funds have been invested in 2019/20.

Summing up the year, the report gives a rundown of new, ongoing and completed R&D projects and in the case of the nursery industry, the inclusion of a marketing report.

Throughout the 2019/20 period, the nursery industry was faced with multiple challenges, from drought to bushfires, floods, the biosecurity thread of fall armyworm and the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Amidst these challenges, the industry pushed-on, investing $2.34 million in R&D and $808,000 in marketing.

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Monday, 26 October 2020

Levy-funded project ‘Research, Development and Extension program for control, eradication and preparedness of vegetable leafminer’ (MT16004) is working towards understanding the full impact an infestation of vegetable leafminer species could have on the Australian horticulture sector and where management practices could be put in place.

Together, project lead cesar, and project partners Plant Health Australia, the University of Melbourne, Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) and AUSVEG have been busy developing a suite of useful resources that can be utilised by the nursery industry to ensure the risk of exotic vegetable leafminer incursion is minimised.

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Thursday, 15 October 2020

Collection for the 2020 Nursery Industry Statistics survey is now underway, and growers are urged to participate.

The importance of the 2019/2020 survey can not be understated. COVID-19 restrictions have spurred an already growing trend within Australia for more and better indoor and outdoor greenspaces. It is essential for the industry to reliably capture the market impact of this time to demonstrate the benefits of greenlife to Governments.

From October to early December, a team from independent research agency Down To Earth Research (DTER) will be contacting growers across Australia to conduct interviews and collect key business data for the 2019/20 financial.

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