A reminder to all growers grafting this winter to protect their orchard investments by following biosecurity protocols. These apply whether grafting one plant, one hectare or a whole new development block.

The movement of plant material is considered the highest risk pathway of spreading pathogens around our industry, and this can include new biosecurity threats that may have recently arrived that we are not yet aware of.

KVH’s budwood certification scheme (KPCS) sets out requirements to reduce the risk of budwood transmission. These are minimum requirements that must be implemented for all budwood movements. However, where possible growers should take additional steps to source the cleanest budwood possible. Growers should source budwood from as far as practically possible from any symptomatic vines and use the cleanest blocks available to source budwood.

• Select budwood from within your own orchard or if this is not possible, source from a budwood supplier who is KPCS certified with KVH.

• KPINs supplying budwood off their orchard must register annually with KVH and complete a simple KPCS Budwood manual including practices:

• Monitoring and tagging symptomatic vines so they can be avoided when budwood collection takes place.

• No collection of budwood from material left on the ground after pruning.

• Avoidance of any vines showing disease symptoms, including Psa.

• The application of a copper spray within the four weeks immediately prior to budwood collection.

• Tool hygiene when grafting is important to avoid spreading infection between plants, blocks, and orchards. Sanitise all tools coming on to the orchard, using effective and recommended sanitisers and clean tools at least between rows and at breaks.

• Budwood cannot move from a Psa positive orchard to a Not Detected orchard.

• Budwood can move between KPINs under the same legal ownership provided no more buds are moved than are required to graft 1000 plants per year under this option. Contact KVH for all other movements – permissions may be required.

• All other distributors of budwood, such as pack-houses and grafters need to register annually, and should check their requirements with KVH by contacting [email protected].