{"id":330552,"date":"2023-03-30T16:17:44","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T06:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=330552"},"modified":"2023-11-08T14:55:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T04:55:38","slug":"plan-bee-to-protect-avocado-exports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2023\/03\/30\/plan-bee-to-protect-avocado-exports\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan Bee To Protect Avocado Exports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Associate Professor Andrew Geering plans to implement the bee surveillance more broadly (Photo: Megan Pope)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Avocados showing sunblotch which disfigures the fruit (Photo: Dr Lara Pretorius, QAAFI)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

March 30, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bees could help prove Australian avocados are free of a pathogen that could be a barrier to exports, according to research by the University of Queensland and the CSIRO.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor Andrew Geering from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) said monitoring for avocado sunblotch was important to protect lucrative overseas markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had an active control plan for avocado sunblotch since the 1980s because it has the potential to cut tree yield by about 80 per cent,\u201d Dr Geering said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though this pathogen has nearly been eradicated, there is a chance there are still pockets of infection and this is a concern for Australia\u2019s trading partners.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the viroid is seed-transmitted at a very high rate, a child in New Zealand using an infected avocado seed for a school project could introduce sunblotch to their country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team began looking for a simple way to check for avocado sunblotch in Australian orchards without having to individually test every tree.<\/p>\n

They found bees were the answer through a concept developed by the CSIRO\u2019s Dr John Roberts who had detected plant viruses alongside bee viruses in hives.<\/p>\n

\u201cAvocado trees are 10 metres tall by 5 metres wide and there might be 20,000 in an orchard, and we needed a way to efficiently gather samples,\u201d Dr Geering said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBees are brought in to pollinate the trees as a normal farming practice to improve yields.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take the pollen back to their hive, so effectively they\u2019ve done the sampling work for us and all we have to do is test the pollen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s much better than a team of people climbing up ladders or riding cherry pickers to collect leaves.<\/p>\n

\u201cBees are reliable, free and very thorough in their sampling activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Geering plans to implement the bee surveillance more broadly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we\u2019ve demonstrated the principle, we\u2019d like to roll it out in the largest avocado producing area in Australia, the Atherton Tableland, to demonstrate that it\u2019s free of the pathogen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Roberts said bees in approximately 530,000 commercially managed hives delivering paid pollination services around Australia could be recruited for more surveillance tasks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFor avocado sunblotch we can use them for annual monitoring during pollination across wide areas,\u201d Dr Roberts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis approach can also provide surveillance for multiple pathogens simultaneously of both honeybees and plants, making this a powerful cross-industry biosecurity tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research was funded from the avocado industry levy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bees efficiently visit every tree in an orchard (Photo: Dr John Roberts, CSIRO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Bee hives situated close to an avocado orchard … bees are brought in to pollinate the trees as part of a normal farming practice (Photo: Dr John Roberts, CSIRO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bees could help prove Australian avocados are free of a pathogen that could be a barrier to exports, according to research by the University of Queensland and the CSIRO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":330554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,36],"tags":[1134],"yoast_head":"\nPlan Bee To Protect Avocado Exports - southburnett.com.au<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bees could help prove Australian avocados are free of a pathogen that could be a barrier to exports, according to research by the University of Queensland and the CSIRO.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2023\/03\/30\/plan-bee-to-protect-avocado-exports\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plan Bee To Protect Avocado Exports - 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