20th Meeting of the Panel on Quarantine Pests for Forestry

Paris, 2015-03-09/11

The Panel considered the specific issue of urban tree health and recognised its particular importance. The Panel decided that the most important tasks could be establishing and coordinating collaboration between NPPOs, arboriculturists and tree surgeons, municipalities and other authorities/agencies interested in urban tree health, and improving public awareness and knowledge on urban tree health problems. Encourage public reporting of infestations is an important part of urban tree management. Organisation of workshops/trainings for people involved in urban tree protection and development of EPPO guidelines (including contingency plans) should also be considered in future. At the same time, NPPOs should not forget about measures to reduce risk of pest entry. 

Participants - View more pictures >

The Panel revised the EPPO Standard PM 8/3 Commodity-specific phytosanitary measures for Quercus & Castanea and agreed to send the revision for country consultation. The Panel considered that the Standard should be consistent with the EPPO Study on wood commodities other than round wood, sawn wood and manufactured items in terminology and with the EPPO Standard PM 8/2 Commodity-specific phytosanitary measures for Coniferae. The Panel also considered that the ‘Transitional arrangements: procedures for the application of phytosanitary requirements’ (actual Appendix I to the Standard) could be transformed in future in a separate document/Standard and be only mentioned in the EPPO Standards of the series PM 8 as a reference.

The Panel considered what A1 and A2 pests of the EPPO Lists are associated with 14 main genera of deciduous forest trees and decided to develop separate commodity Standards initially for Betula, Populus and Salix.

The Panel considered pests of forestry concern in the updated EPPO Alert List and provided recommendations on them. The Panel recommended deleting Aproceros leucopoda and Thaumastocoris peregrinus from the Alert List. The Panel recommended conducting PRA for Xylosandrus crassiusculus. The Panel recommended inclusion of Euwallacea fornicatus/Fusarium euwallaceae into the EPPO Alert List. The Panel considered the pre-PRA for Grosmannia aoshimae prepared by Mr Montecchio and decided to create a group working by e-mail consultation to combine PRAs for G. aoshimae and Polygraphus proximus (vector of G. aoshimae) in one document by the next Panel meeting.

The Panel had a session together with the EPPO Panel on Phytosanitary Measures to discuss issues of interest for both Panels.

The results of these discussions are reflected in the report of the EPPO Panel on Phytosanitary Measures.