Deadline: 31-Oct-22
The Plant Health Centre (PHC) is seeking applications for Enhancing preparedness against pests and diseases: plugging evidence gaps for Scotland.
Preparedness for action should new pests and diseases arrive in Scotland depends upon available evidence, drawn from many sources, including UK Plant Health Risk Register. However, the evidence base is often lacking and a better evidence base is required to improve Scotland’s preparedness and ultimately resilience against a wide range of future threats from pests and diseases. This is an open call to help plug these evidence gaps with respect to important threats to Scotland’s plants – whether widespread, rare, domesticated or native to provide a better evidence base to improve Scotland’s preparedness and ultimately resilience against a wide range of future threats from pests and diseases.
The Plant Health Centre helps Scotland’s regulatory authorities prepare for unwanted pests and diseases through plugging such evidence gaps and, for example, has commissioned projects on Xylella, Bronze Birch Borer, and Potato Cyst Nematode in order to improve knowledge and understanding. Many gaps still exist in our understanding of the complex threats that these and other pests and diseases pose to Scotland’s plants.
This is an open call to help plug these evidence gaps with respect to important threats to Scotland’s plants – whether widespread, rare, domesticated or native.
Impact: Better evidence base to improve Scotland’s preparedness and ultimately resilience against a wide range of future threats from pests and diseases.
Objectives
- To provide evidence that contributes to preparedness against important pests and diseases which threaten the health of Scotland’s plant.
- It is anticipated that the focus of this work will be on either specific pests and diseases identified as of considerable risk to Scotland’s plant health (and likely to be identified as such in the UK Plant Health Risk Register), on plant assets that are of special significance to Scotland (important plant species or habitats), on official contingency plans, or on issues raised as concerns by key stakeholder groups.
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The evidence gaps to be filled may vary in character – including
- a basic understanding of the biology of a particular pest/disease (e.g. climatic requirements of pest/disease and how these might change in the future; plant host range – particularly with respect to plants of economic, environmental or cultural importance to Scotland);
- understanding of modes and rate of reproduction and spread, better profiling of possible arrival pathways and likely entry points; appropriate methods to enhance detection and enable early eradication of any incursions;
- specific plant based assets of socioeconomic or ecological importance to Scotland and how to protect them;
- key processes or activities that can be implemented to protect Scottish plants.
Funding Information
Maximum funding available (including overheads and VAT, where applicable): Projects with a maximum budget of £40,000 will be funded and we expect to be able to fund up to 4 projects
Outputs
- Final Report (<20 pages of text excluding figures, appendices, and references) on investigations, to contain key sources and recommendations for implementation or further work.
- Brief policy summary (1-2 pages) explaining how the work has contributed to filling an evidence gap(s), and the context in which the findings can be used by policy makers and practitioners.
- Attendance at briefing discussion with PHC Steering group to discuss findings and next steps.
- Presentation at Scotland’s Plant Health conference, or any other relevant stakeholder meeting(s), to disseminate findings and contribution to other KE output such as the PHC virtual poster room or blogs.
For more information, visit PHC.
For more information, visit https://www.planthealthcentre.scot/call-for-projects