grapegrowing
Improved vineyard biosecurity and hygiene practices John Whiting
Summary The Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has been leading the rezoning of some Victorian Phylloxera Risk Zone (PRZ) areas into a Phylloxera Exclusion Zone (PEZ). The process commenced in the early 2000s in the Henty wine region and the Wimmera area of western Victoria and has since expanded to cover the wine regions of the Grampians, Pyrenees, Bendigo, Heathcote, Geelong, Macedon Ranges and Sunbury. The rezoning process has followed national protocols, where vine roots in all vineyards in an area are inspected for the presence of phylloxera. In addition, details on biosecurity and hygiene practices are collected from the grape producer prior to the inspection, to determine the potential risk of phylloxera being moved into the vineyard. If found to be free of phylloxera over a three-year period, the area can be nominated for PEZ status.
Method The questions provided to producers were taken from the standard survey form produced under the National Phylloxera Management Protocol (http:// www.gwrdc.com.au/webdata/resources/ files/ Appendix1questionnaire.pdf) and covered practices described for other industries in Biosecurity Manuals developed with Plant Health Australia. The vineyard hygiene and biosecurity information was also collected at the end of the three-year survey period to determine what changes had occurred. In recent years, additional questions were provided to producers to gain more information on vineyard hygiene and biosecurity practices, but this report is limited to questions that were asked across all the surveys. Data were analysed using a chisquared test between paired comparisons and a Fisher’s exact test to determine significance levels.
Results and discussion Over the past eight years, useable information was provided from 542 out of 886 vineyards in the survey areas, a response rate of 61.2%. With a response rate below 80%, the data only reflects the practices of the respondents
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and cannot be extended to represent the practices of the total population of producers. Some of the hygiene and biosecurity practices surveyed relate to the regulations for the movement of host materials into a PEZ, but most are additional practices that producers should consider implementing as part of standard management practices (much like occupational health and safety practices). The surveys have shown that the imposition of regulations associated with a PEZ were initially only likely to affect a relatively small proportion of producers (between 5 and 15%, depending on the region). The regions that indicated 15% of producers were moving host materials into the PEZ were those surveyed early in the process. With the progressive expansion of the previous Western PEZ, many of the source vineyards will now be part of the new Victorian PEZ, further reducing the number of producers affected by the regulations. The mean vineyard size was 8.4 hectares but many of the vineyards were small, with 43% covering less than 2 hectares. The vineyards were a mix of commercial vineyard/wineries, vineyards only and hobby vineyards and the majority were established in the 1996-2000 period. The vineyard hygiene and biosecurity practices surveyed have been grouped according to the main activities conducted in a vineyard (Table 1).
Vineyard management During the rezoning process, there has been increased adoption of the use of vineyard biosecurity signage, the use of footbaths and the provision of washdown areas (Table 1). Signage has been provided by DPI and other sources and is common in commercial vineyards, but less so with hobby vineyards. Footbaths are made available in about one-third of the vineyards, but observations suggest they are not always used to optimum effect. For example, growers do not always use freshly made chlorine solutions and boots may not be soaked for the required 30 seconds. The installation of wash-down areas was quite low www.winebiz.com.au
at the start of the rezoning process and, whilst a significant increase has occurred, less than 20% of respondents currently use them. There has been no change in access to vineyards, most likely because fencing and gates are usually put in place during vineyard establishment and are unlikely to be modified later.
Off-farm labour The use of off-farm labour heightens the biosecurity risk, particularly if the labourers work on other vineyards (potential to t ransfer pests and diseases) and there are no cleaning procedures in place for labour entering a vineyard (no disinfestation of pests and diseases that happen to be carried by labourers). Between the surveys, there was a significant decrease in the use of off-farm labour but no change in the proportion of the labour that had worked on other vineyards (Table 1). The latter result relates to the continued use of labour teams which often operate out of central areas, e.g. Melbourne, and which can cover a range of vineyard regions, including those in PRZs, PEZs and Phylloxera Infested Zones (PIZs). Producers need to be aware that labour teams could be working in a PIZ one day and in a PRZ or PEZ the following day and implement procedures to minimise the potential transfer of phylloxera. There has been a significant increase in the use of cleaning and disinfestation procedures for off-farm labour working in vineyards. However, producers only needed to use one practice to be counted in this category and one practice is usually not enough to ensure maximum biosecurity protection. The most common ‘cleaning’ practices were footbaths, the cleaning of equipment (e.g. secateurs) and asking labour teams to wear clean clothing when commencing work in a vineyard.
Machinery and equipment Machinery and equipment used in vineyards are capable of picking up phylloxera and other pests and diseases and creating a biosecurity risk if moved to another vineyard in an uncleaned state. The surveys found there was a October 2012 – Issue 585