Category: Editorial

Cleaning up New Zealand’s waterways

by

Tim Herman, NZPPS Immediate Past President

The New Zealand Government recently announced a programme to clean up New Zealand’s waterways.  This programme is not just targeted at the rural sector – urban waterways are also included. Using Te Mana o te Wai as the guiding principle, the health of a waterway will have priority followed by the needs of the people and, finally, commercial needs.

From a rural perspective the short-term impact is going to be for feed lots and dairy farms, and for fencing off any waterways (streams and wetlands) on all properties. In the medium-term, nutrient levels in waterways will be a focus, particularly Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen (DIN), but also phosphorus and other nutrients. All farm plans will be required to have a freshwater module and there will be limits on synthetic nitrogen inputs for pastoral farms (horticulture has a period of reprieve at present).

What does this mean for plant protection?  

Improved nutrient management could lead to improved pest, disease and weed control as excess nutrients in crop/pasture are known to exacerbate pest, disease and weed issues. The horticultural and arable industries are already improving management of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser through the use of rapid testing of soil samples and knowledge of crop nitrogen needs.

Fenced off riparian strips could provide an opportunity to enhance populations of natural enemies and other beneficial organisms. This depends on the plant species chosen for planting in the riparian strips.Other than that, there are surely plenty of research opportunities to study how these changes are going to impact plant protection into the future.

From the Editor – Use it or Lose it

by

Dr Ruth Falshaw, NZPP Editor

Historically, the NZPPS published an annual proceedings of the papers to be presented at its conference. Twenty years ago, the word ‘Proceedings’ was removed from the title to highlight that contributions were peer-reviewed papers not just a collection of presentations. However, publication was still a pre-requisite to presentation at the annual conference. The declining number of papers has threatened the viability of the annual conference for a number of years. The situation reached a critical point in 2019 with just 33 papers accepted/oral presentations. The scope of conferences has also been restricted to the topics of published papers, which may not reflect current trends nor include cutting-edge research. These issues led to members agreeing at the 2019 AGM that presenters at the conference are no longer required to publish their work in New Zealand Plant Protection. 

It was heartening to have almost 70 abstracts pledged for oral presentations at the 2020 NZPPS conference (now sadly postponed until 2021). In contrast, there have been just six submissions to New Zealand Plant Protection so far this year (of which four are still active). One paper (which was submitted in 2019) has been published to date in Volume 73. The relative numbers of conference and manuscript submissions support the view that members are keen to share their work with a face-to-face audience by presenting it at the annual conference but not to publish papers in the Journal.

New Zealand Plant Protection is a journal that belongs to its members and is an important freely accessible repository for local and applied studies that may not be within the scope of other journals. Truly open-access journals allow free access to, and therefore much greater coverage of, published work without the need for a subscription or payment to view papers online. However, the Journal will survive only if members continue to support it. To do this they must submit manuscripts describing high-quality research. 

New Zealand Plant Protection provides an online submission system and quality control through peer review by at least two referees plus the editor. All submissions are checked for plagiarism/duplicate publication. Advantages of publishing in this journal include:

–    immediate free open access for published papers on the Journal’s website (no pay-per-view);

–    capacity to include colour images and supplemental data/additional files at no extra cost;

–    a very competitive publication fee (to cover essential production costs incurred by the Society) compared with other open-access journals;

–    a set fee rather than page charges to encourage publication of longer, more substantial pieces of work. 

Additional information for authors is available at: https://journal.nzpps.org/index.php/nzpp/about/submissions

The advent of the digital age has had a disruptive and transformational effect on scientific publishing internationally so, from next month, I’ll be writing a blog on the Journal’s website about key issues such as: impact factors; plagiarism; predatory publishers; fraud; and open-access publishing. Sign up to the NZPPS via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to receive links to these posts.

Coping during COVID-19 lockdown – Joy Tyson

by

Joy Tyson, NZPPS Executive

Scientist, Plant & Food Research

As a scientist at Plant & Food Research, I was one of the lucky ones. Within PFR, entire teams were mobilised to ensure that we were able to continue to operate as a ‘virtual institute’. My job remained secure and I had plenty of report and proposal writing to do. And as a scientist, there were always those long-planned manuscripts to keep planning, and hopefully progress. Although the sheer number of online meetings has been a little overwhelming, the daily lab meetings and weekly team meetings helped allay fears that I was perhaps less productive than I could have been.

On a personal level, my husband and I are both scientists, so while he took possession of the kitchen table, I set up in our freezing basement with a beanie and blanket, and our teenage children did online schooling in their rooms. Travel restrictions meant that we were unable to visit my older parents up north. Both have existing health conditions, and it was a constant nagging concern that if something went wrong, we would be powerless to help.

On a physical level, Level-4 lockdown halted planned trials and experiments, work in progress was frozen (not literally), or in some cases destroyed as plants and growing seasons were unfortunately oblivious to the lockdown. Budgets and work plans are still up in the air, with our carefully planned time lines in ruin. Even at Level 2, it is still not business as usual, with social distancing rules resulting in shift work, very careful planning of lab work and some work continuing from the home ‘office’.

Coping during COVID-19 lockdown – Eirian Jones

by

Eirian Jones, President NZPPS

Associate Professor, Lincoln University

It seems like a long time ago that New Zealand went into Level-4 lockdown on 25 March, which changed our country forever. For me as a Lecturer at Lincoln University, it was a bedlam with overseas students trying to get back into the country to start university, students having to leave their accommodation and return home – flights booked out, ferries booked out and stressed students and parents. Most academics gave up their Easter break as we were frantically moving/adapting our teaching to an online platform including learning how to use a suite of new programs (Screencast-o-matic or Panotpo anybody!) to enable recording and delivering lectures, tutorials and assessments in a new way.

Once semester started on 27 April, we were nearly in Level 3 but we had to teach in a different way with delivery of all course material being online. One of the difficulties we encountered is that many of our students, especially the rural students (of which we have many at Lincoln University), did not have adequate internet connections to allow downloading lecture material, attending Zoom tutorials or online assessments. Our tutor conducted many a test by phone with students, usually after having to calm a stressed-out student first! 

We are now at Level 2 and Lincoln University started to reopen on 18 May and business is gradually coming back to normal for our research postgraduate students at least – as our teaching is still continuing online. We are now preparing frantically for the final exams which will all be online this semester introducing an added challenge for both students and academics. This has required a change in the exam format and the type of questions being included as these will be akin to ‘open book’ exams. What I must say is how well our students have adapted and risen to the new challenge, and this bodes well for the future as these students enter our workforce where their ability to adapt and their resilience will be of immense value to New Zealand’s changing landscape post COVID-19.

Pea Weevil Bruchus pisorum L. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), delimitation and eradication Wairarapa, New Zealand

by

Rory MacLellan, MPI

A Government programme to wipe out pea weevil Bruchus pisorum, has achieved a world first, with Biosecurity New Zealand announcing the successful eradication of the noxious pest from Wairarapa.

This means the nearly four-year ban on pea (Pisum sativum L.) plants and straw has been lifted. Commercial and home gardeners can again grow pea plants and use pea straw as garden bedding material. Biosecurity New Zealand has been working with Wairarapa farmers since March 2016 to contain pea weevil that threatened to put a major dent in the country’s $130 million pea industry.

The pea weevil, an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act 1993, was confirmed in harvested pea seeds in Wairarapa, New Zealand on 4 April 2016. Bruchus pisorum is strictly monophagous, relying onpea plants to complete its life cycle. Weevils spread by flight and travel in infected pea seed, straw or dirty farm machinery. The larvae feed on young peas and heavy infestations can decrease pea production by 10–15% seriously affecting seed weight, germination and increasing productivity costs. Peas are an important economic crop for New Zealand, annually earning $50 million domestically and $80 million in exports. Therefore, weevil-infested peas could threaten both markets. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) initiated a biosecurity response to the pea weevil incursion to determine: if there was a breeding population; its distribution in the Wairarapa; and if there had been any spread to other pea growing areas of New Zealand. The objective of the response was eradication should a population be present. MPI in partnership with the pea industry, issued a Controlled Area Notice (CAN) in the Wairarapa enforcing a ban on growing peas within a specified area and placed controls on moving pea material within, in and out of that area. Surveillance surveys were undertaken within pea crops in New Zealand grown outside the Wairarapa to determine if the pea weevil had spread outside of the CAN. Within the controlled area, delimiting surveys were undertaken by multiple sweep-net sampling inspections of flowering peas planted in trap-crop pea plots containing early and late varieties (Figure 1).

  • Figure 1: Pea weevil sweep-net inspection

Insecticides and herbicides were applied to the plots once flowering had finished, killing any weevils that may be present and the pea plants, which were also mulched to ensure desiccation and prevent regrowth (Figure 2). 

Two years of negative detections from the pea growing areas outside the controlled area confirmed the absence of pea weevil. Within the controlled area, a decrease of 99.1% of the pea weevil population was recorded from year one to two (2016 and 2017) and zero detections in 2018 and 2019, confirming the eradication of pea weevil from New Zealand.  

  • Figure 2: Pea weevil early-variety traps crops desiccated and mulched, late variety still flowering

The response shows what can be achieved when Government, industry and communities work together. In this case, the destructive insect was detected early and in a region with mountain ranges providing natural borders to restrict natural spread. However, the most important aspect of this response was the awareness and support within the local community in the banning of growing pea plants. This removed the plant required for the pea weevil to complete its life cycle, decreasing the population until it died out and eradication declared. 

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