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Imprint
Preventive container screening of volatile organic substances monitoring invasive pests towards forest protection
Project
Project code: 2218WK13X2
Contract period: 01.08.2019
- 31.07.2022
Budget: 392,484 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research
Keywords: risk assessment, forest protection
The aim of the project is to develop a prevention strategy in order to control and minimise the spread of invasive plant pests that can be introduced by container loads throughout Germany and the EU. The Asian Longhorn Beetle (ALB) is a major representative of such invasive quarantine pests. The ALB usually finds its way via imported pallet wood. At present, the control is taking place in the infested area following confirmation of an infestation by large-scale clearing of deciduous wood. The felling and the monitoring cause immense ecological and economic damage, although only in a few cases has extermination been successful so far. In the long term, it can therefore be assumed that the native hardwood stock will be threatened over a large area. Therefore, an efficient method for the detection of quarantine pests suitable for effective import control of containers shall be developed during the project. For this purpose, a methodology is to be developed by which the wood infestation with pests such as the ALB can be detected at an early stage by air sampling of containers. In this way, import into the country and uncontrolled spread can be ruled out as early as possible and damage to the domestic forest can be prevented by early detection. It is known from preliminary work that the ALB emits specific volatile substances in the form of larvae in trees with which infestation can be identified. If it is possible to identify these volatiles by suitable air sampling onto enrichment filters on the container, preventive screening is much simpler and can be done in much larger samples since containers no longer have to be opened for this purpose. In the project instrumental analytical methods are used for this as well as the tracking dog as detector. The use of dogs offers the advantage that very sensitive "detectors" can also be used, which may reduce the effort of the sampling method.
Section overview
Subjects
- Crop Protection
- Process engineering
- Renewable Resources
