Invasives Blog

CABI has launched a new product to help facilitate and improve the biosecurity of plants and plant products being traded around the world that are at risk of invasive pests such as the Colorado beetle – a major threat to potato crops.

The Pest Risk Analysis (PRA) Tool is an add-on to the Crop Protection Compendium (CPC) – funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Netherlands Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) through the Action on Invasives programme – which allows National Plant Protection Organizations (NPPOs) to carry out risk assessments on plant commodity imports.

The PRA Tool, which is being offered through a marginal increase to the basic subscription for the CPC but free to the NPPOs of 97 lower and middle-income countries, works by providing the very latest live data structured around the three stages of pest risk analysis. These include:

Stage 1: Initiation – identifying the reason for the PRA and the pest(s) of concern to the PRA area;

Stage 2: Risk assessment – determining the probability of entry, establishment, spread and potential consequences of an individual pest in order to determine whether it meets the criteria of a regulated pest;

Stage 3: Risk management – selecting the appropriate management options to reduce the risks identified in Stage 2.

Features of the PRA offering also include the ability for users to add new information and overrule existing Compendium data, the generation and categorization of pest lists associated with a commodity pathway and a template to complete risk assessments for individual pests.

Martin Parr, Director, Data & Services, Digital Development, said, “Invasive pests can have a major impact on global food security with an estimated 40 percent of crops lost to pests such as the devastating fall armyworm – as well as a range of pathogens and weeds.

“It is imperative that we arm farmers, extension workers, researchers, government officials and other actors in the agricultural sector with the very latest digital data to protect plants and plant products from the full mix of devastating pests.

“The Pest Risk Analysis Tool is a vital asset in the identification, assessment and management of pests which draws upon the extensive resources within the Crop Protection Compendium including the comprehensive CPC datasheets.”

The CPC datasheets include up-to-date information on pests, diseases, weeds, host crops and natural enemies that have been sourced from experts, edited by an independent scientific organization, and enhanced with data from specialist organizations, images, maps, a bibliographic database and full text articles.

The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) publishes international standards for conducting Pest Risk Assessments of which CABI’s PRA tool is fully aligned with the set stages of PRA outlined in ISPM 11.

Additional information

Find out more about the Pest Risk Analysis Tool from the dedicated webpage or contact PRA@cabi.org  

The Crop Protection Compendium is the world’s most comprehensive site for information on crop pests with over 27,000 datasheets and more than 390,000 abstracts. Learn more from the dedicated website.