Recent years have seen a substantial increase in invasive insect species invading countries worldwide. Many of these insect species (e.g., brown marmorated stink bug, spotted lanternfly, spotted wing drosophila) are highly polyphagous and are considered as high-risk biosecurity threats to valued plant systems in many countries and can result in multi-billion dollar losses to agriculture and horticulture industries. Classical biological control (CBC) i.e. the release of an exotic natural enemy for permanent establishment to control an exotic invasive pest, is frequently considered for sustainable management of invasive arthropod pests and has often proved highly cost effective. However, the severity and imminent nature of some new high-risk insect threats means that it would be highly advantageous if we could avoid waiting for a pest to arrive before adopting CBC strategies. Traditionally there is a delay of several years before a biological control agent (BCA) can be introduced while research and biosafety testing is conducted during which time the invasive pest becomes established and spreads. Therefore, there is a need for a pre-emptive approach to develop CBC for invasive insect pests prior to their arrival and establishment into new environments.

Pre-emptive biocontrol is a novel approach that has the potential to increase effective preparedness for a potential invasion of insect pest species. This could, for example, accelerate response to invasive pests in urban areas before they spread to agricultural areas. Natural enemies can potentially be selected, screened and pre-approved for release before an anticipated pest invasion meaning that a natural enemy could be released against a target pest at a much earlier point in the emerging management programme. This could result in significantly reduced pest densities and rates of spread, reducing the economic or environmental damage associated with the pest. However, such an approach may not always be feasible. Therefore, we need to define the fundamental prerequisites, principles and objectives of best-practice pre-emptive biocontrol risk assessment, in order to assess the feasibility of conducting pre-emptive biocontrol for high-risk pests and to develop robust guidelines.

In this project we 1) reviewed a number of high-risk priority pests and their potential for pre-emptive biological control options, 2) produced a standard guideline and framework to assess feasibility to conduct pre-emptive risk assessment for the introduction of BCAs, and 3) established a network and repository for the exchange of information on biocontrol. We conclude that all work conducted in this project was highly valuable to all participant countries, and that the developed standard guidelines and framework are suitable to be used by researchers, from any country, and are recommended to be used to assess feasibility to conduct pre-emptive risk assessment against high-risk pests. We hope this project provided with important contribution for the successful implementation of the novel pre-emptive biological control approach for the benefit of the biocontrol community.