Environment, Food and Rural Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board

Please find attached evidence from the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on tree health and plant biosecurity. The evidence has been collated from HDC, HGCA and PCL crop sectors of AHDB. The evidence focuses on the sufficiency of resources and adequate management plans to effectively prevent disease outbreaks and, where necessary, to mitigate impacts.

· Are the roles and responsibilities of public agencies for monitoring incidences of plant and tree diseases or pests sufficiently clearly defined?

1. Roles and responsibilities are not as clear as they should. This is partly a consequence of devolved responsibilities and also overlaps and gaps with Plant Health roles existing in FERA and the Forestry Commission. Some monitoring approaches need to be consistent throughout the UK and take advantage of new diagnostic technologies, but existing monitoring and methods need to continue to enable analysis of long term data sets. It is expected that agencies will have different priorities, so emphasis on plant species or specific pests, weeds and diseases are likely to differ. It is sometimes useful to have the ability to adopt different approaches (within a common framework) between the UK plant health authorities—for example, in seed potatoes being able to implement more rigorous controls to protect the health status of high grade production in Scotland—the bacterial pathogen Dickeya solani in potatoes is an example. There does however remain a need for better communication and sharing of approaches with all public agencies involved with monitoring.

· Are the Defra, Forestry Commission and Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) contingency plans for managing a disease outbreak, such as Chalara fraxinea, adequate and appropriate to control its spread and mitigate the impacts of disease?

2. There is engagement with industry on the preparation of contingency plans but the boundaries of what may be achieved or are possible could be compromised because of lack of clarity on financial support and cost sharing mechanisms. The need to commit resources in response to new outbreaks can however compromise other plant health management activities such as routine certification or commitment to research projects. It is instructive to note how quickly several academic groups (not involved in routine surveillance or regulatory work) responded to the discovery of Chalara fraxinea and have established networks of communication nationally and internationally (without the delay of securing additional financial support). In the US, there are specialist academic groups that are “maintained” with federal or state funds for just such eventualities with the expectation and obligation that they will respond quickly when required but without the needs to engage in routine regulatory or surveillance activity. Perhaps there are lessons that the UK can learn from the way other countries respond to outbreaks of previously unrecorded diseases.

· How effective is co-ordination between agencies such as Natural England, the Forestry Commission and Fera?

3. Using Phytopthora ramorum (sudden oak death pathogen) as an example, two years into the issue there was little engagement from Natural England even though heathland had been identified as being at risk. The issue of co-ordinating all relevant agencies across all three governments also has significant implications if not done well. There is therefore a need for more effective communication between the agencies and sharing of each agencies priorities.

· Are there sufficient resources for research to provide effective evidence on the emergence of new threats to trees and plants and for management of existing threats? Is there sufficient coordination of research effort and does the UK have an adequate pool of the right skills to draw upon?

4. Staff resources in both research and field pathologists, and in a wider context of plant health, weed and pest specialists and in skilled inspectorate staff are now very limited in the UK. The British Society of Plant Pathologists has recently published a report which provides the evidence for this with regard to plant pathology (http://www.bspp.org.uk/news.php?id=54 ). Erosion of expertise and capacity in the UK to identify and carry out research into new pest, weed and disease threats inevitably means that when these limited resources have to be mobilised to address a specific issue, routine activities of monitoring and inspection are further under resourced. In cereals, a short term (annual) commitment of funding a virulence survey of cereal rusts inhibits investment by research organisations in both training of pathologists and the development of novel research methods to study new disease outbreaks.

 Are sufficient resources being put into developing effective responses to plant health threats, such as improving resistance, biocontrols and chemical or management responses?

5. Developing effective responses currently occurs, necessarily, “after the event” and will therefore always lag behind the development of the problem. The development of generic techniques prior to new plant health issues developing may serve to shorten the lag period and could potentially also result in a smoothing out of the effort required; however, additional investment would be required to achieve this. An example of this type of approach is the improvement of resistance of cereals which requires a step change approach to achieve the long term goal of greater durability of resistance as opposed to the reliance on single major genes of unknown durability. Durable resistance would be an additional requirement alongside the breeding of new varieties with high yield and good quality characteristics. The Crop Improvement Research Club assists in this type of research, but more applied aspects which used to be funded through Defra LINK are no longer resourced. Some plant health risks are entirely predictable and pre-emptive approaches to their resolution were taken in former times when more resources were allocated to strategic research. An example is the inevitable build-up of club-root disease (caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae) in acid soils where oilseed rape and cereals have been grown in rotation for more than 30 years. This was predicted, decades ago, and the incidence is increasing as a consequence of high rainfall and short term crop rotations, there has been no priority to provide the necessary funding for the long-range research necessary to deliver resistant germplasm for breeding programmes.

6. Biocontrols present a more difficult approach to pre-emptive action as ideally the control needs to be as specific as possible to the problem and the development of an effective biocontrol can take many years to ensure no unintended side effects. It would be possible to start developing suitable controls by building on existing work in other countries where the threat may already exist. As above this would probably need additional resources.

7. Chemical management responses. Most development work is supplied through commercial companies but ensuring sufficient information is available to register chemicals used in other countries for use in the UK on affected crops would be a sensible response. This would require investment in the necessary work and having the capacity within Chemicals Regulation Directorate to deal with any additional work.

Does the international regime for trade in plants and the EU plant health framework provide a sufficiently flexible and responsive framework to respond to newly identified pests and diseases or to those that are spreading? Can these regimes impede stronger import controls? Are plant health controls sufficiently broad to cover trade in tree and plant products such as biofuels?

8. The proposed changes to the EU plant health framework show greater flexibility through definition of low and no prevalence areas although the final form of this has yet to be negotiated and agreed. There is no mention of biomass so a potential gap exists regarding disease risks from chips and sawn logs.

 · What lessons are being learnt in the UK from the management of Chalara dieback of ash in other EU Member States: for example on trade in plants, management of infected trees including saplings, and development of resistant trees?

9. Good use of existing research and experience in other EU states eg Denmark, assists in prioritising activities and tackling the problem in the UK.

January 2013