Plant Protection and Quarantine

The Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Plant Protection and Quarantine is a civilian sub-agency within USDA that procures pest management, plant health monitoring, biological control, and related inspection services to detect and prevent agricultural threats at the border and within domestic agricultural systems. PPQ issues the majority of its awards as competitive open contracts; it is not primarily a grant-making entity.

PPQ has issued 6,203 federal contract awards cumulatively since 2003, with a combined potential value of $959.6 million and $889.8 million in obligations. Over the last five years, PPQ awarded 290 contracts in 2022, 272 in 2023, 290 in 2024, 177 in 2025, and 143 year-to-date in 2026, reflecting a decline in recent annual volume. The agency has transacted with 1,767 distinct prime contractors across the portfolio lifetime. Recent award activity remains current: the most recently recorded award dates to 30 October 2026.

The prime contractor base is highly fragmented. Over the last five years, the top five primes by award count hold 12 percent of recent awards. Scentry Biologicals, Inc. leads by award count with 54 recent awards totaling $11.2 million in potential value, followed by Beachs Trees Selective Harvesting LLC with 32 awards and $3.2 million, and New TECH Solutions, Inc. with 20 awards and $1.5 million. By potential value, the top five primes hold 6 percent of recent combined potential value; Arlluk Technology Solutions LLC and Aleut Information Technology LLC lead that measure with $19.8 million and $13.4 million respectively. The dominance of no single prime and the broad contractor base indicate an agency that spreads work across a large ecosystem of small and mid-sized vendors.

The set-aside mix reflects open competition: 71 percent of awards carry no set-aside designation, while 25 percent are Small Business set-asides of various kinds. 8(a) Sole Source awards represent 3 percent of the portfolio; SDVOSB, HUBZone, and WOSB designations collectively account for less than 1 percent. PPQ's contracting posture favors open competition with a meaningful but secondary small-business component.

PPQ has issued 10 federal grant awards cumulatively, all as Cooperative Agreements, with combined federal dollars obligated of $1.2 million. The most recent grant award was made on 1 September 2020; no recent grant activity has been recorded. Grant-making is not a material function of this sub-agency.