Maintaining diverse culture collections ensures adequate resources and capability to support plant biosecurity and global trade
Nicola Spence: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (United Kingdom)
<div>The long-term trend of increasing volume and speed of movement of plants and other material traded from an increasing variety of sources increases the chances of exotic pests arriving with imported goods and travellers, as well as by natural means. The GB plant biosecurity strategy ensures activity is directed at priority pests and pathways and is informed by comprehensive risk assessment, which includes plant pathology, population dynamics, and epidemiology, as well as social sciences to understand the values at stake. To respond effectively to new and emerging threats, GB as a whole must be resilient, capable and prepared to respond flexibly to new and emerging threats to ensure GB production has a good reputation to allow exports of plants and plant products to develop, with consequent economic and social benefits. Plant pest culture and reference collections are fundamental for supporting accurate diagnosis of plant pests. The capability of National Plant Protection Organisations to reliably identify these organisms is critical for effective phytosanitary measures, to ensure evidence-based policy on new and emerging plant pests and to facilitate the validation of new molecular protocols. In England there are several important culture collections of viruses and phytoplasmas, fungi, bacteria, nematodes and insects which are maintained and curated to support plant biosecurity which will be presented and their application discussed</div>
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