In this webinar, Dr David Nehl provided an overview of significant recent interceptions by the department’s Plant Pathology section. The team provides diagnostics and advice on biosecurity risk and management of plant pathogens for goods under biosecurity control at the border, for border surveillance and for high-risk nursery stock plants in post-entry quarantine (PEQ) at the department’s facility at Mickleham. In recent years, the number of pathogens requiring screening in high-risk PEQ has increased substantially, and exotic pathogens continue to be intercepted in border inspections and surveillance.

To meet expanding workloads and more-effectively focus diagnostics of border samples on biosecurity risk, the Plant Pathology section is deploying technical innovations, including robotics, high-throughput sequencing, MinION sequencing and MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry.