ORANGE farmers are horrified their last line of defence against crop diseases has gone with the departure of the only plant disease specialist in NSW from Orange Agricultural Institute (OAI).
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The Department of Primary Industries last week confirmed an Orange-based bacteriologist had been granted a redundancy but a leak from inside the department says there is no plan to replace him.
The loss could devastate Orange farmers who rely on DPI scientists to keep their crops disease free.
“It’s no good - I’m just dismayed,” Nashdale orchardist Dino Cunial said.
“If you see something strange on your orchard you’d usually just take it into Orange ... you’d presume there’d be someone employed at the DPI that could find out what’s wrong with it.”
The Carinya Orchards owner said, with Australia about to begin importing apples from fire blight affected countries, relaxing biosecurity had the potential to destroy the orchard industry.
He said compromising biosecurity would mean farmers would have to spend thousands of dollars to clean out diseases while NSW’s reputation as a disease-free exporter would be left in ruins.
Hedberg Hill vigneron Peter Hedberg suspects NSW will soon fall victim to new strains of disease.
“It’s obviously a concern when you have more and more bilateral agreements with places like the US and China,” he said. “I think we’re going to have more pests and diseases, that’s for sure.”
A DPI spokesperson confirmed last week a plant disease specialist at OAI had sought and been granted a redundancy but said NSW was still able to maintain biosecurity due to a range of other specialists and a $46 million upgrade of the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute (EMAI) in Sydney.
However, according to a leak from a former DPI employee, the EMAI cannot replicate the skills that have been lost at the Orange institute.
“The skills do not exist at EMAI - there is one molecular biologist who has moved away from the lab into a mostly admin position and a technical officer who is overworked and has minimal experience culturing bacteria,” the former employee said.
It also claims the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) was recently forced to turn to OAI when it could not identify a disease suspected to be fire blight.
“At OAI we used to provide the only service in Australia that was capable of identifying all plant bacterial pathogens,” the former employee said. “The DPI is trying to cut costs by shedding experienced staff.
“[Departmental head] Richard Sheldrake said to a meeting of staff at OAI in June 2008 that DPI would not be replacing scientists as they leave because it could not afford to - he stated it would be three-plus years before any staff were replaced and that would be new graduates at the lowest level of pay and experience.”
A DPI spokesperson refused to respond to the information contained in the leak or to provide access to Dr Sheldrake.
