Suzie Christensen, Lord Howe Island Board, The Lord Howe Island Signal

LHI has been the latest site to host field trials for a novel detection method, Phytophthora-sniffing dogs.

Staff from the Botanic Gardens of Sydney’s Plant Clinic, and Tate Animal Enterprises, visited the Island from Friday 5 April – Friday 12 April, to conduct searches in the PPP and settlement area using Alice, a Springer Spaniel, trained to detect the soil-borne disease.

These are some of the first field trials completed by Alice, one of two dogs recently trained to confidently discriminate between infected and non-infected plants. This method has showed promising results in training and laboratory environments, with the hope it will allow for landscape-scale detection of the pathogen.

With the help of LHIB staff, samples were collected using both conventional sampling methods and detection dogs.

The Botanic Gardens of Sydney’s Plant Clinic also trialled different detection methods to enable the LHIB to collect and prepare on-Island samples for testing. This will provide faster, more accurate results than previously available by shipping the samples to the mainland.

Increasing the speed of Phytophthora detection will help in the ongoing challenge of preventing the introduction of the pathogen to the Island and responding as quickly as possible to on-Island infestations.

Results from the field trials will be cross-referenced over the coming months with the other sampling methodologies undertaken alongside the detection dog searches. LHIB will share the results once available.

This two-year project is funded by the NSW Government’s Saving our Species program and the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

For more information on phytophthora, head here. To learn how you can help stop the spread, read LHIB’s walking track hygiene protocols.

This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 30 April 2024.