New approaches to pest risk analysis for plant quarantine

摘要

There is an urgent need for pest risk analysis (PRA) methodologies to provide the scientific basis for plant quarantine decision-making required under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures of the World Trade Organisation. The use of 'Mind-mapping' is illustrated to investigate and compare the elements involved in PRA. To combine these elements into an overall risk assessment, mathematical approaches are being developed to account for both the greater impact of extreme scores and the weighting of individual risk elements. Case studies concerning the introduction and/or spread potential of some lepidopteran and dipteran pests are presented.