Increasing numbers of travellers and increasing volumes of goods entering Australia place increasing pressure on Australia’s biosecurity system for faster and accurate identification of plant pests and pathogens, especially where these may be exotic species, national priority plant pests, industry high priority pests and trade sensitive established pests.

HTS technologies offer a rapid, reliable and cost-efficient diagnostic platform to identify pests and pathogens in a single test, increasing Australia’s diagnostic capacity, and delivering rapid, more accurate results. HTS generates massive datasets, and the increasing amount of data being generated on plant pests and pathogens has emphasised the need for a secure, centralised platform that allows the submission, sharing and analysis of standardised HTS data.

As part of a project funded under the Australian Government’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s (DAFF) Biosecurity Innovation Program, Plant Health Australia (PHA) hosted its third stakeholder workshop in April to continue consultation on the draft governance arrangements and data standards. MTP Services also led discussions about the wireframes it has developed for the front end of the proposed database.

All participants across the three workshops will have the opportunity to review and comment on the third workshop report, the wireframes and the draft data standards and governance arrangements modified based on comments at the April workshop.

The workshop was well attended with participants from a wide range of stakeholder organisations including DAFF, state and territory government departments, CSIRO, Bioplatforms, ANU and Hort Innovation.

For further information please contact PHA’s Cheryl Grgurinovic or Lucy Tran-Nguyen.