The report of a suspected case of Tropical race 4 (TR4) in Queensland, Australia, has been confirmed by Biosecurity Queensland. This is the third such case since the first report of TR4 in Queensland in early 2015. The property on which the fungus was first discovered has since been bought out by the industry and shut down. The second incursion of the disease was found in July 2017 on a property owned by one of the largest growers in the country.
The Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries attributed minimal farm downtime on the third infested property to a prompt response by Biosecurity Queensland officers and the farm already having an established on-farm biosecurity plan.
In Queensland, infested farms must abide by biosecurity protocols to continue trading, which explains why the rate of spread has been extremely slow compared to worlwide experience.
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- Independent review of Biosecurity Queensland's TR4 programme
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