A pest risk assessment was carried out using all available information found in the literature and also two softwares developed by the CSIRO, CLIMEX and DYMEX. CLIMEX was used to assess the suitability of the climate in Australian rice growing area for each pest/disease and then when necessary and possible, a pest/disease model was created with DYMEX and run with Australian climatic data. The Australian climatic conditions and/or the rice growing practices were found to be unfavourable for the majority of the exotic diseases. However, two diseases of rice (rice blast and kernel smut) and one plant parasitic nematode genus (root nematodes) were identified as having the potential to threaten the Australian rice industry if ever introduced in south eastern Australia.

This publication includes chapters on - Introduction to the coconut palm; Locating and collecting coconut germplasm; Germplasm conservation (complementary conservation and gene banks in various locations, cryopreservation research and poverty reduction among coconut growing communities); Characterizing diversity (morphometric, biochemical and molecular methods); Germplasm use (conventional breeding, breeding for drought tolerance, use of molecular markers, evaluation of hybrids and varieties; farmers' varietal preferences and coconut micropropagation); Major pests and safe movement of germplasm Information (coconut lethal yellowing, germplasm movement and pest risk assessment), public awareness, institutional support and partnerships (genetic resources databases, catalogues of germplasm, products and recipes, public awareness initiatives, research support and research networks); COGENT's regional network reports; and Country reports on status of coconut genetic resources research South Asia

The Community Rainforest Reforestation Program (CRRP) and other planting programs included in their aims the long-term expansion of forest industries in north Queensland with the production of high quality rainforest timbers in plantations. Plantation productivity (survival, growth rate, form and yield) and quality of the timber product are influenced in part by plantation health which can be adversely affected by insect pests and diseases. Plantation development planning should include an assessment of the potential risks due to pests and diseases and site-related problems, facilitating appropriate species choice. Once established, regular plantation health surveillance should be incorporated into the management program, enabling early intervention where appropriate. A plantation health surveillance program: identifies pathogens, insect pests and their parasites and predators; enables early recognition of health change; identifies predictive patterns of pest and disease activity; facilitates the correlation between plantation productivity and pests and diseases; and contributes to a valuable bank of knowledge. Hardwood plantation research has recognised serious pests such as tip moths of the Meliaceae family as well as wood boring beetles and moths, sap sucking bugs and beetle defoliators associated with several tropical and subtropical eucalypts. Diseases such as Cylindrocladium leaf blight, Phellinus noxius and phytophthora root rot are also potential threats to rainforest replantings. Risk assessments and health surveillance were not conducted in the CRRP plantings, missing an opportunity to identify and manage the threat of pests and diseases in rainforest reforestation programs. Examples of appropriate risk assessment and health monitoring in hardwood plantation programs are the Department of Primary Industries’ Joint Venture scheme and Hardwoods Queensland project.

Pest risk analysis (PRA) is a tool used in plant health to assess risks of quarantine pests or other organisms harmful to plants and to identify options for their management. Standards of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organisation (EPPO) are available to facilitate the procedure of PRA. Recent amendments of these standards allow a better analysis of risks posed by plant pests to biodiversity and the environment. By this, the regulation of species that threaten biodiversity (invasive alien species) can be technically justified according to the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement under the World Trade Organisation. At present, in particular risks of invasive alien plants are in the focus of adapting PRA in Europe. There are several differences between the assessment and management of pests directly harmful to cultivated plants and pests threatening biodiversity or the uncultivated environment. In many cases, the identification of (potential) invasiveness is very difficult. For the assessment of economic importance of environmental risks, several methodologies are provided that differ from the conservative economic assessment. In contrast to the 'traditional plant pests', which are introduced unintentionally, alien plants are usually introduced intentionally. Planting them into intended habitats usually does not pose any problems, only very few species spread into unintended habitats and have adverse effects. For selection of management options a differentiated approach is necessary, including the prohibition of introduction of significantly risky plants and the obligation for specified requirements to restrict their spread.

A recombinant baculovirus insecticide, AcMLF9.ScathL, has been constructed that expresses a cathepsin L-like protease. This protease degrades the basement membrane of infected-lepidopteran larvae. AcMLF9.ScathL kills larvae significantly faster than the wild type baculovirus. Before field trials can be conducted with this virus, risk assessment studies are required to examine the potential impact of the virus on nontarget organisms. We examined the impact of AcMLF9.ScathL on the survival, development, and behavior of the parasitoid Cotesia marginiventris (Cresson) that parasitizes infected second instar larvae. Larvae of Heliothis virescens were exposed to the parasitoid and infected with the wild type or recombinant virus at >LD99 at 72, 96, or 120 h after parasitism. Control larvae were mock infected. Choice tests showed that infection with AcMLF9.ScathL did not affect the host preference of the parasitoid. At 72 h post-parasitism, the survival of parasitoids emerging from hosts infected with AcMLF9.ScathL was lower than for parasitoids emerging from hosts infected with wild type virus or uninfected controls. There were no significant differences between AcMLF9.ScathL and wild type virus treatments for the larval emergence time, adult emergence time, sex ratio, size, and fecundity of C. marginiventris. These results indicate that use of AcMLF9.ScathL in insect pest management poses a slightly greater risk to the parasitoid at early stages of parasitoid development than use of the wild type virus at >LD99 dose.

Mango stone weevil (MSW), Sternochetus mangiferae Fabricius, is a widely distributed monophagous pest of mango. Assessment of the potential of non-pesticidal controls has indicated few alternatives to the use of insecticide sprays for control. Field studies were conducted over 3 years to evaluate the efficacy of selected synthetic, botanical and animal-origin insecticides in reducing MSW infestation in Alphonso mango. It was found that four synthetic insecticides-deltamethrin, acephate, carbaryl and ethofenprox-obtained levels of infestation of between 3.3% and 14.8% at harvest, in contrast with a level without control of 33.0%. Two biological-origin insecticides-azadirachtin (of plant origin) and fish oil rosin soap (of animal origin)-obtained intermediate levels of control, of 27.4 and 23.0% respectively, which were not significantly superior to no-treatment. In order to assess the reliability of pre-harvest evaluations, to address the risk of harvest data being lost, information was also gathered of infestation of mangoes in early and late seasons prior to harvest. Although the rank-ordering of controls in their performance varied between early season, late-season and harvest assessments, the pre-harvest assessments reflected the superior control by synthetic insecticides to that by agents of natural origin.

To refine our knowledge and to adequately test hypotheses concerning theoretical and applied aspects of invasion biology, successful and unsuccessful invaders should be compared. This study investigated insect establishment patterns by comparing the climatic preferences and biological attributes of two groups of polyphagous insect species that are constantly intercepted at New Zealand's border. One group of species is established in New Zealand (n = 15), the other group comprised species that are not established (n = 21). In the present study the two groups were considered to represent successful and unsuccessful invaders. To provide background for interpretation of results of the comparative analysis, global areas that are climatically analogous to sites in New Zealand were identified by an eco-climatic assessment model, CLIMEX, to determine possible sources of insect pest invasion. It was found that south east Australia is one of the regions that are climatically very similar to New Zealand. Furthermore, New Zealand shares 90% of its insect pest species with that region. South east Australia has close trade and tourism links with New Zealand and because of its proximity a new incursion in that analogous climate should alert biosecurity authorities in New Zealand. Other regions in western Europe and the east coast of the United States are also climatically similar and share a high proportion of pest species with New Zealand. Principal component analysis was used to investigate patterns in insect global distributions of the two groups of species in relation to climate. Climate variables were reduced to temperature and moisture based principal components defining four climate regions, that were identified in the present study as, warm/dry, warm/wet, cool/dry and cool/moist. Most of the insect species established in New Zealand had a wide distribution in all four climate regions defined by the principal components and their global distributions overlapped into the cool/moist, temperate climate where all the New Zealand sites belong. The insect species that have not established in New Zealand had narrow distributions within the warm/wet, tropical climates. Discriminant analysis was then used to identify which climate variables best discriminate between species presence/absence at a site in relation to climate. The discriminant analysis classified the presence and absence of most insect species significantly better than chance. Late spring and early summer temperatures correctly classified a high proportion of sites where many insect species were present. Soil moisture and winter rainfall were less effective discriminating the presence of the insect species studied here. Biological attributes were compared between the two groups of species. It was found that the species established in New Zealand had a significantly wider host plant range than species that have not established. The lower developmental threshold temperature was on average, 4°C lower for established species compared with non-established species. These data suggest that species that establish well in New Zealand have a wide host range and can tolerate lower temperatures compared with those that have not established. No firm conclusions could be drawn about the importance of propagule pressure, body size, fecundity or phylogeny for successful establishment because data availability constrained sample sizes and the data were highly variable. The predictive capacity of a new tool that has potential for eco-climatic assessment, the artificial neural network (ANN), was compared with other well used models. Using climate variables as predictors, artificial neural network predictions were compared with binary logistic regression and CLIMEX. Using bootstrapping, artificial neural networks predicted insect presence and absence significantly better than the binary logistic regression model. When model prediction success was assessed by the kappa statistic there were also significant differences in prediction performance between the two groups of study insects. For established species, the models were able to provide predictions that were in moderate agreement with the observed data. For non-established species, model predictions were on average only slightly better than chance. The predictions of CLIMEX and artificial neural networks when given novel data, were difficult to compare because both models have different theoretical bases and different climate databases. However, it is clear that both models have potential to give insights into invasive species distributions. Finally the results of the studies in this thesis were drawn together to provide a framework for a prototype pest risk assessment decision support system. Future research is needed to refine the analyses and models that are the components of this system.

Overheid en bedrijfsleven willen voor twee specifieke organismen, Lyriomyza trifolii (Floridamineervlieg) en Lyriomyza huidobrensis (Nerfmineervlieg) een duidelijk beeld krijgen van de quarantainewaardigheid en de consequenties van het voorkomen op de quarantainelijst. Hiertoe is een Pest Risk Analysis uitgevoerd. Middels een kostenbatenanalyse zijn de economische consequenties van het wijzigen van de huidige quarantainestatus bepaald. Daarnaast is het besluitvormingsproces voor eventuele wijziging van de quarantainestatus in kaart gebracht, met specifieke aandacht voor de rol van het bedrijfsleven. The government and business wish to obtain a clear picture of the need for quarantine measures regarding two specific organisms, Lyriomyza trifolii (serpentine leafminer) and Lyriomyza huidobrensis (South American leafminer), and the consequences of their appearance on the quarantine list. To this end, a Pest Risk Analysis has been carried out. The economic consequences of changing the present quarantine status have been determined through a cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the decision-making process for changing the quarantine status is charted, paying specific attention to the role of business.