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The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) awarded a $160,000 Cooperative Agreement under CFDA Program 10.025 - Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care to the California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA). The purpose of this award is to conduct a commodity-based survey to detect the presence of nursery and ornamental pests, including the Cotton Seed Bug, Box Tree Moth, and Pink Hibiscus Mealybug, in California. The survey will focus on high-risk nurseries in four counties, with the goal of demonstrating that California's nursery stock and ornamentals are free from these key pests. The award supports activities such as identifying survey sites, hiring and training staff, conducting field inspections and sample collection, and submitting samples for laboratory analysis. The project aims to prevent the introduction and establishment of these pests, which would negatively impact California's $3.92 billion nursery industry and $138 million export market.

Purpose

The purpose of the commodity-based survey is to detect the presence of nursery and ornamental pests, to include cotton seed BUG (CSB) oxycarenus hyalinipennis, box tree moth (BTM) cydalima perspectalis, and pink hibiscus mealybug (PHM) maconellicoccus hirsutus. With the detections of CSB in california in 2019, IT is critical that CA is able to demonstrate to its trading partners that CA nursery stock and ornamentals are free from these key pests. This survey will focus primarily on nurseries with hosts plants in counties with officially confirmed and citizen scientist reports of CSB. Including PHM in this survey will prevent the spread and movement within CA. The survey will also include, when possible and if hosts are present, production nurseries near the 2021 sites where BTM was purportedly brought into california from an infested canadian nursery, helping to prevent potential establishment, and protecting the CA nursery and ornamental industry, and export markets. 2.

Activities

Identify survey sites developed from risk-based criteria across four counties. Some of the time will be spent hiring and providing training for survey activities, preliminary field identification of suspect samples, followed by proper submission to the plant pest diagnostic center (PPDC) for examination and identification. Surveys will occur july through september. Traps will be placed at 35 sites for PHM and BTM. CSB will be visually surveyed at the same 35 locations as PHM. Nurseries will be visited twice in the season. Four counties will be surveyed. Trapping and survey guidelines will be based on the caps approved methods. 3. Deliverables and expected outcomes: a tabulation of the number of sites trapped and sampled and the number of samples submitted can be used to determine if the survey efforts were sufficient to meet the project needs. The survey methods described in this document target high risk production nurseries. The program will be considered successful if the targeted pests are not detected in california nurseries, or infestations are found early enough to allow an appropriate mitigative response. Negative survey results would support that BTM has not been introduced nor established and that CSB and PHM are not present in commercial nurseries in CA, thereby showing areas free from these pests, promoting CA's export program, and maintaining trade with state and international trading partners. 4. Intended beneficiary(IES): nursery stock imported into california is shown to be a pathway for the introduction of exotic plant pests. The CA nursery industry is a $3.92 billion dollar industry that was ranked 5TH in value for agricultural commodities in the state in 2021. The CA nursery and flower industry also comprises 28% of the US export market in this sector and was valued at $138 million in 2021. IT is critical that CA is able to demonstrate to its trading partners that CA nursery stock and ornamentals are free from key pests. With the recent detections of CSB in CA, maintaining trade with state and international trading partners is especially important. 5. Subrecipient activities, if known or specified at the time of award: staff from the county agricultural commissioners' offices will assist in this survey (attachment C).