The pest detection/emergency projects (PD/EP) branch is responsible for the early detection and prompt eradication of injurious agricultural and environmental pests

The California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) received a $2 million Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care Federal Grant Program (CFDA 10.025), effective May 1, 2025 through April 30, 2026. The award funds the development and maintenance of Emergency Plant Health Response Teams (EPHRT) throughout California that serve as first responders to plant pest emergencies. Under this cooperative agreement, CDFA will conduct pest detection surveys, implement treatment protocols, enforce quarantine regulations, and identify invasive pests in coordination with USDA-APHIS.

The specific deliverables and services include developing and implementing new control technologies and treatment options for plant health emergencies, enhancing emergency preparedness through improved knowledge bases and response capabilities, and providing rapid funding to deploy established response protocols for containment, control, or eradication of agricultural pests. Success will be measured through quantifiable metrics including the number of emergency responses conducted, delimitation surveys completed, eradication projects declared successful, and post-eradication surveillance results. These efforts directly protect California's approximately $59 billion agricultural industry from injurious pests and diseases.

Activities

Develop, promote, and implement new control technologies, and tools and treatments for use in plant health emergencies and/or established pest programs. Enhance preparation for plant pest emergencies by improving the knowledge base, response options and capabilities prior to the onset of a plant health emergency. Provide initial and short-term funding to quickly implement programs that employ existing and initial response protocols for the overarching goals of containment, control, or eradication of plant health emergencies. Deliverables and expected outcomes: evaluation of the thoroughness of ephrt can be quantified by the number of emergency responses and the number of projects where the pest is declared eradicated. A tabulation of the number of delimitation surveys and the size of the resultant eradication project can also be used to determine if the ephrt efforts were sufficient. The success of the eradication program is monitored by intensive surveys for a specified time period after the last pest has been detected. Typically, this time period is determined by a temperature-dependent developmental model driven by day degrees. Negative survey results would indicate that the previous eradicative actions have been and continue to be effective. Intended beneficiary(IES): at risk is california's approximately $59 billion-dollar agricultural industry, which employs approximately 500 ,000-800,000 farmworkers and grows more than 52% of U.S. Fruits and vegetables. In 2023, there were 62,900 farms covering 23.8 million acres in operation in california. Many of the crops grown in california are hosts for serious invasive pests including invasive fruit flies (IFF). The 2023 gross production value of california commodities that would be potentially impacted by IFF alone, represents $25.3 billion dollar industry. Rapid response is critical to provide for and help develop effective mitigation options. This approach also minimizes the impact on the public and the environment by avoiding large-scale treatment programs. Without a rapid response, the new pests could cause devastating losses to the agricultural industry if they were to become established in california, and severely impact export and trade.subrecipient activities, if known or specified at the time of award: contracts with hazardous waste disposal, pesticide treatments, california office of environmental health hazard assessment (OEHHA), california department of pesticide regulation (DPR), university of california davis (UCD), california highway patrol (CHP), cooperative agricultural support system (CASS), and california conservation corps (CCC) will be used to carry out survey tasks, evaluation, and other support services.