Australia: Poor plant growth? Get Grow Help
Diagnostic services can help with identification and assist in tailoring management actions that suit your business; production nurseries are urged to make good use of the detective services they offer.
One such service is Grow Help Australia – a service offered through the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. This service is heavily subsidised for Australian production nurseries through the levy-funded project Building the resilience and on-farm biosecurity capacity of the Australian production nursery industry (NY15002).
Project leader and diagnostician Andrew Manners says even growers who are confident they know the problem can benefit from sending in samples for testing, to confirm their diagnosis as part of quality assurance processes. Results showing that plants are free of pests and diseases are also important and can provide customers with greater confidence that your products are healthy.
Growers receive a written report containing a list of tests carried out on each sample, an interpretation of the results, and recommendations based on the specifics of the nursery, plants and pests or diseases detected.
Diagnostic services are especially useful for production nurseries that have something unusual going on, are seeing poor plant growth with no apparent reason, or have tried management options that have failed.
Dr Manners says it can save both time and money to confirm the identity of the pest or disease causing issues sooner rather than later. Understanding the biology of the organism in question can also allow for more specific treatment and prevention.
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