Risk ranking: Plant pests assessment finds low overall risk

 Background

The Norwegian Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet) is responsible for developing regulations and proposing measures to protect Norwegian agriculture and natural ecosystems from serious plant pests. The risk landscape is constantly evolving due to increasing global trade, changing trade patterns and cultivation practices, climate change, and a lack of control measures. EPPO (European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization) recommends that member countries regulate certain pests as quarantine pests through its A1 and A2 lists. Of the 305 EPPO-listed pests not currently regulated in Norway, 61 randomly selected pests were assessed in this first progress report.

Background for the risk assessment

The Norwegian Food Safety Authority commissioned VKM to provide ongoing assessments of pests that EPPO recommends for regulation as quarantine pests, for which the Norwegian authority has not yet assessed for regulation. The assignment aims to provide them with a basis for prioritising which new pests should be considered for regulation in Norway.

Methodology

VKM used FinnPRIO, a semi-quantitative tool for rapid risk ranking of pests. FinnPRIO was developed in Finland and follows the structure of a standard pest risk assessment by evaluating probability of entry, probability of establishment and spread, and potential impact on plant health. Climate suitability in Norway was modelled for each pest using the Maxent machine learning algorithm. An AI-based literature retrieval system (RAG) was used to systematically extract information from scientific literature to answer the assessment questions.

Findings

VKM assessed 61 pests: 24 fungi, 12 nematodes, 11 insects, 8 viruses, and 6 bacteria. The pests were classified into five risk classes:

• Very high risk: None

• High risk: The fungus Fusarium euwallaceae, which is carried and spread by an ambrosia beetle and can infest many commercially important trees in Norway

• Moderate risk: Six pests, including the moth Tuta absoluta (tomato leafminer), the bark beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae, and two bacteria that can damage greenhouse tomato production

• Low risk: 16 pests

• Very low risk: 38 pests

Many pests scored low because climatic conditions in Norway are unsuitable for establishment, host plants are absent or import pathways do not exist.