`37 New Plant Species Added to Xylella Host List - Olive Oil Times

37 New Plant Species Added to Xylella Host List

By Julie Al-Zoubi
May. 1, 2020 13:22 UTC

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has added 37 new plant species to its list of Xylella fas­tidiosa hosts.

EFSA said most of the plants had been nat­u­rally infected and were dis­cov­ered in both European Union and non‑E.U. coun­tries, includ­ing France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the United States and Iran.

Commercial, wild and orna­men­tal plants were all found to be Xylella hosts and included flea­bane, helichry­sum stoe­chas, pis­ta­chio and per­sim­mon.

The newly iden­ti­fied plants have been added to EFSA’s data­base of Xylella host species and brought the list of known hosts up to 595. Of the known species, 343 have been iden­ti­fied by a min­i­mum of two detec­tion meth­ods, either under nat­ural or exper­i­men­tal con­di­tions.

The update fol­lowed an inten­sive search of up-to-date sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture and noti­fi­ca­tions to the E.U.’s plant health inter­cep­tion ser­vice, in addi­tion to results from EFSA’s own inves­tiga­tive activ­ity.

EFSA also said that some of the exist­ing data on strains of Xylella fas­tidiosa, along with their geo­graph­i­cal coor­di­nates, had been updated or mod­i­fied.

EFSA’s data­base offers vital evi­dence to sci­en­tists and aids risk asses­sors in con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance as well as other phy­tosan­i­tary mea­sures, such as the inspec­tion of plants for plant­ing.

Last month, EFSA launched a new web­site to coin­cide with inter­na­tional year of plant health. The web­site high­lights the work under­taken by the orga­ni­za­tion and its part­ners to com­bat plant pests and pre­serve Europe’s plants.





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