Oral Presentation Australasian Plant Pathology Society Conference 2025

Role of International Culture Collections and Plant Disease Herbaria in Development Assistance Projects. Case Study in Laos supported by the Crawford Fund. (120131)

Montana Hickey 1 , Bevan Weir 2 , Jordan Bailey 3 , Tara Garrard 4 , Cathryn Todd 5 , Sophia E Callaghan 1 , Lester Burgess 6
  1. Dept of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries, Mascot, NSW, Australia
  2. Landcare Research, Lincoln , New Zealand
  3. Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, NSW DPIRD, Orange, NSW, Australia
  4. Faculty of Sciences Engineering and Technology, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia
  5. Department of Primary Industries and Regions, Adelaide, SA, Australia
  6. Sydney Institute of Agriculture, University of Sydney , Sydney, NSW, Australia

The authors are members of a larger group of over 40 plant pathology mentors from five countries who have been helping with surveys of plant diseases in southern Laos based mainly in Champasak province at the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO), Pakse, since 2012. The group have surveyed over 55 horticultural crops including vegetable crops such as cabbages, tomatoes and chilli, fruit crops such as citrus, durian and bananas, as well as black pepper, coffee and tea. These crops represent valuable exports to neighbouring countries and Europe. Laos is a small country with few crop protection specialists. Our group has worked closely with technical-extension staff at Pakse PAFO and helped establish a small diagnostic laboratory. Importers in the EU have been requesting checklists of diseases and pests. Hence a priority of our program has been to publish ‘First Reports’ of diseases and pests to support checklist development. Consequently we have also deposited cultures of fungal and bacterial pathogens under permit in the International Collection of Microorganisms from Plants (ICMP) in New Zealand. Duplicate cultures are deposited with the Department of Agriculture, University of Sassari, Italy. In addition we have deposited pressed and dried specimens under permit with the NSW Plant Pathology and Mycology Herbarium, DPIRD. We report here a summary of findings of recent surveys of foliar diseases.

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