The Scotsman

New centre puts Scotland ahead on plant health

- By BRIAN HENDERSON

Scotland’s new Centre for Plant Health puts the country at the forefront of disease and pest control – in a world where climate change, internet trading and personal import are adding to the ever present threat of pest and diseases to the country’s arable and horticultu­ral crops, forests, grasslands and general environmen­t.

Offering an early warning and rapid response facility, the virtual centre, launched only six weeks ago, is designed to offer a single point of contact providing access to a network of knowledge, expertise and practical advice in the event of any major threat to the country’s plant health.

Outlining the role of the facility at yesterday’s meeting of the Scottish Society of Crop Research, Professor Ian Toth of the James Hutton research institute, who also serves as director of the new centre, said that there were over a thousand pests and diseases on the UK plant health risk register identified as posing a possible threat to the country’s arable crops, trees, horticultu­re and wild plants.

“This makes it vital to adopt a co-ordinated approach across sectors to monitoring plant diseases, as well as helping stakeholde­rs understand how to improve their own plant health capabiliti­es,” Toth told the meeting held at the institute’s Invergowri­e site.

Set up with funding from the Scottish Government of £600,000 – top sliced from other research budgets – the Plant Health Centre would, said Toth, deliver science and evidence on the range of threats to the administra­tion – and provide access to a network of specialist advice and practical skills.

Disease forecastin­g and ensuring speedy access to effective treatment and control of disease would also fall under the centre’s remit.

“So we are looking at strengthen­ing surveillan­ce monitoring and emergency responses to key pathogen threats,” said Toth.

Half the budget would also be utilised to commission research into specific areas identified as being of particular threat.

Toth said that

it was important to connect all sectors involved in the area – and while the centre was split into specialist areas covering forestry, agricultur­e, environmen­t and horticultu­re the focus would be on bringing together and sharing informatio­n and approaches from across these sectors.

While the facility is headed up by the James Hutton Institute, he said that sector leads from Scotland’s Rural College (agricultur­e), Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (horticultu­re and environmen­t) and Forest Research (forestry), together with partners from the universiti­es of Edinburgh, Stirling and Strathclyd­e, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Biomathema­tics and Statistics Scotland (BIOSS), will all feed into the centre’s range of skills from understand­ing public perception­s to long-term disease forecastin­g.

“Of all potential threats to the UK, the centre will focus on those of highest risk to Scotland, taking into account our climate and the plants of most importance to our economy and social wellbeing,” said Toth.

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