Plant health research and development plan

Question 1

Executive summary

Accepted Answer

This plan sets out the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) plant health research and development needs and outlines our approach to delivering these over the next 5 years, from 2023 to 2028. It has been developed with stakeholders, including users and providers of plant health research and development, to provide a roadmap that communicates and shares our future priorities with others.

The terms ‘we’ and ‘our’ are referenced throughout this plan and in all instances, this refers to Defra.

This plan supports Defra’s delivery of the plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain (2023 to 2028) published in January 2023, particularly outcome 4: An enhanced technical capability. It will also support delivery of Defra’s tree health resilience strategy (2018), which is planned for refresh later in 2023.

The plan identifies and aims to deliver 4 plant health research and development strategic objectives. These strategic objectives aim to:

enhance our understanding and knowledge of plant health issues and solutions to protect us from threats
provide evidence on which to develop risk-based policy approaches, and to enable our delivery partners and practitioners to make robust decisions and take action
develop and deploy innovation and new technologies in support of our plant health policy objectives
provide world class plant health research capability

We have organised the plant health research and development needs into 6 research themes. Each theme is divided into focal areas with indicative research questions to help describe our current priorities:

theme 1: risk assessment and horizon scanning
theme 2: inspections, diagnostics, and surveillance
theme 3: management of pests and diseases
theme 4: resilience and adaptation
theme 5: plant health related behaviours
theme 6: evaluation

Finally, the plan outlines our intended approach to deliver our strategic objectives through:

collaborative working
co-design, knowledge transfer and exchange
facilitating innovation
supporting a research skills infrastructure

We then describe how we manage projects throughout the project cycle to provide the highest quality outputs and outcomes.

Question 2

Purpose and scope

Accepted Answer

This plant health research and development plan summarises how Defra currently meets its plant health research and development needs and identifies our priorities for the future. In particular, this involves supporting the delivery of the plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain (2023 to 2028) and the successor to the tree health resilience strategy (2018). The plan expands on detail published in the Defra group research and innovation interests (2021). It will guide the commissioning of Defra’s plant health research for the next 5 years, and the priorities of our research programmes and partnerships.

Some aspects of ongoing management of plant pests and diseases are led by other Defra teams, particularly those relating to crops and food production. We briefly describe how we work and co-ordinate with these wider activities in chapter 2.

The plan has been developed in collaboration with stakeholders including both users and providers of plant health knowledge and technology. In sharing our plans, we aim to clearly communicate and share our future priorities with others. Additionally, it is hoped that this roadmap will also inform the investment decisions of research funders and the priorities of researchers in order to leverage additional impact beyond that of the research Defra directly commissions.

Question 3

Chapter 1: Introduction

Accepted Answer

Context

Our plants and trees are vital natural capital. They have an estimated annual value of £15.7 billion per year, when we consider the economic, environmental, and social benefits they provide the UK. This includes the value of our agricultural crops and horticulture which are vital to food security, commercial forestry and the social, biodiversity and carbon sequestration value of plants throughout our landscapes. In 2021, around 21.5 million tonnes of plants and plant products, valued at £15.8 billion, were imported and exported between the UK and the rest of the world. However, pests and diseases pose an increasing risk to these natural capital assets and trade values. At a global level, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that annually, up to 40% of crop production is lost to pests. Each year, plant diseases cost the global economy over $220 billion and invasive insects at least $70 billion. Increased plant biosecurity threats have been attributed to several factors, including climate change and the increase in global trade and travel, which provides more entry pathways for pests and diseases.

Since the publication of the first plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain (2014) the UK government has placed a high, and increasing, importance on protecting our plants from these risks using an evidence-based approach.

In 2023, Defra, together with the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, and Forestry Commission, published an updated plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain (2023 to 2028). This has a vision to ‘protect Great Britain’s plants through a strong partnership of government, industry, and the public, working together to reduce and manage risks posed by plant pests and pathogens, and facilitate safe trade.’

Government will deliver this vision through 4 outcomes:

outcome 1: a world class biosecurity regime – making the most of opportunities to tailor and strengthen our response to prevent and manage the introduction and spread of pests and pathogens that pose a threat to Great Britain’s plant health
outcome 2: a society that values healthy plants – raising awareness of the importance of healthy plants and trees and encouraging the adoption of responsible behaviours across society
outcome 3: a biosecure plant supply chain – government and industry working in partnership to support a biosecure plant supply chain
outcome 4: an enhanced technical capability – building plant health capability and making best use of both existing and innovative science and technology to keep pace with changing threats and ensure preparedness for the future

Defra’s new environmental improvement plan (2023), and its predecessor, also recognise the need to enhance biosecurity to protect our wildlife and livestock and boost the resilience of our plants and trees. It is supported by the tree health resilience strategy (2018) which aims to build the resilience of England’s trees, woods and forests to enhance the benefits trees provide, by mitigating and minimising the impact of pests and diseases and improving the capacity of trees to adapt to changing pressures.

Plant health risks are also recognised in the UK biological security strategy (due for a refresh in 2023) which provides the overarching strategic framework to protect the UK from significant naturally occurring, accidental, and deliberate biological threats and aims for the UK to be resilient to the full spectrum of biological threats. This fits with the UK government One Health approach which seeks to attain holistic health outcomes for people, animals, plants, and the environment.

The UK Plant Health Service (PHS) is comprised of Defra, the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, Daera, and the Forestry Commission and supported by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). The work of the UK PHS is set out in the UK plant health: provisional common framework and overseen by the National Plant Protection Organisation (NPPO), and its subgroups, Plant Health Outbreak Readiness Board and Plant Health Risk Group. Meeting Defra’s research and development needs is critical to the effectiveness of these operational structures. Further detail on this process is provided in the following chapter.

Furthermore, participation in international processes and bodies requires Defra to support evidence-based decision-making and the setting of rules and standards. For example, the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement that governs international trade requires that any measures that are implemented should be based on scientific principles and should not be maintained without sufficient scientific evidence. Likewise, the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), which is an international plant health treaty that aims to prevent the introduction and spread of pests, requires that phytosanitary measures introduced for quarantine pests and regulated non-quarantine pests shall be technically justified.

Plant health research and development strategic objectives

Defra invests in plant health research and development to deliver strategic objectives. These strategic objectives aim to:

enhance our understanding and knowledge of plant health issues and solutions to protect us from threats
provide evidence on which to develop risk-based policy approaches, and to enable our delivery partners and practitioners to make robust decisions and take action
develop and deploy innovation and new technologies in support of our plant health policy objectives
provide world class plant health research capability

Plant health research and development needs

These policy documents and our research and development strategic objectives form the basis for the 6 research themes:

theme 1: risk assessment and horizon scanning
theme 2: inspections, diagnostics, and surveillance
theme 3: management of pests and diseases
theme 4: resilience and adaptation
theme 5: plant health related behaviours
theme 6: evaluation

These themes are described in detail in chapter 3.

Question 4

Chapter 2: Our current plant health research and development programme

Accepted Answer

Some of Defra’s plant health research and development needs are met by scientists and analysts in the department. However, most needs are met by working with the national and international research community, users, stakeholders, and other funders to identify, support and deliver priority needs.

In response to these broad needs, we support a wide and interdisciplinary portfolio of activities that combine long-term strategic research with more applied, responsive approaches.

Since 2014, more than £34 million has been invested in Defra’s plant health research and development programme. Ongoing investment is required to enhance our technical capability and remain abreast of changing threats and potential mitigations, ensuring we are prepared for the future. From April 2022 to March 2023, Defra invested £6 million and supported almost 100 research activities. These activities were led by 12 principal organisations, but involved many more research partners and stakeholder collaborations, including partnerships with organisations from 31 countries around the world.

Forest Research and Fera Science Ltd continue to provide critical plant health research capability to the government and led the largest number of projects in the 2022 to 2023 financial year, with other lead research providers including:

the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)
Future Trees Trust
Met Office
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI)
National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB)
the universities of Cambridge, Newcastle and Salford

These lead research providers secured further research support from a much larger pool of research providers including universities, research organisations and non-governmental organisations as outlined in figure 1. Defra co-funded the Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme, helping to leverage approximately £13 million of UKRI funding towards plant health priorities. The programme distributes funds to organisations including the National Institute for Botany, Fera Science Ltd, James Hutton Institute, Forest Research, as well as multiple universities and further sub-contractors.

Figure 1: Map of plant health research and development spend across UK contractors in the financial year 2022 to 2023.

Organisation categories key

Public sector research establishments (Purple, organisations 1 to 5)

1. Forest Research – over £1,000,000
2. Met Office – between £100,000 and £999,999
3. Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) – between £100,000 and £999,999
4. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew – between £100,000 and £999,999
5. Fera Science Ltd – between £100,000 and £999,999

Independent research organisation (Orange, organisations 6 to 9)

6. National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) – between £10,000 and £49,999
7. UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) – between £100,000 and £999,999
8. James Hutton Institute – between £10,000 and £49,999
9. Rothamsted Research – between £10,000 and £49,999

UKRI research councils (Red, organisations 10 and 11)

10. Match funding for Bacterial Plant Disease Programme led by Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) – between £100,000 and £999,999
11. Supporting Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Treescapes Programme – between £50,000 and £99,999

Academia (Blue, organisations 12 to 30)

12. Gloucestershire University – between £10,000 and £49,999
13. Cambridge University – between £10,000 and £49,999
14. Aberystwyth University – between £10,000 and £49,999
15. Exeter University – between £100,000 and £999,999
16. Warwick University – between £10,000 and £49,999
17. Bangor University – under £10,000
18. University of York – between £10,000 and £49,999
19. Birmingham University – between £50,000 and £99,999
20. University of Glasgow – between £10,000 and £49,999
21. University of Sheffield – between £10,000 and £49,999
22. Durham University – between £10,000 and £49,999
23. University of Strathclyde – between £10,000 and £49,999
24. Newcastle University – between £10,000 and £49,999
25. Queen Mary University – between £10,000 and £49,999
26. Salford University – between £10,000 and £49,999
27. Aberystwyth University – between £50,000 and £99,999
28. University of Reading – between £50,000 and £99,999
29. University of Southampton – between £100,000 and £999,999
30. University of St Andrews – between £100,000 and £999,999

Industry (Grey, organisation 31)

31. Rezatec – between £10,000 and £49,999

Charities and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) (Green, organisations 32 to 38)

32. Sylva Foundation – between £10,000 and £49,999
33. Tree Council – between £50,000 and £99,999
34. Plant Health Alliance – under £10,000
35. Woodland Heritage – between £10,000 and £49,999
36. Future Trees Trust – under £10,000
37. Woodland Trust – between £10,000 and £49,999
38. Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) – between £100,000 and £999,999

Our research activities

Research activities are addressing a range of research requirements including risk and horizon scanning, developing new approaches to surveillance and diagnostics, modelling and managing pests and diseases, building resilient landscapes, understanding behaviours, and policy evaluation (figures 2 and 3). Just under half of the projects in the 2022 to 2023 financial year focused on a single pest or pathogen. Notable examples include Phytophthora, ash dieback, emerald ash borer, Xylella, sweet chestnut blight, and oak processionary moth. Around 21% of the projects were focused on multiple pests or pathogens, and 31% were not directly pest or pathogen related.

Figure 2: Number of active projects across research themes for the financial year 2022 to 2023, with 22 projects for theme 1: risk and horizon scanning, 27 projects for theme 2: inspections, diagnostics and surveillance, 19 projects for theme 3: management of pests and diseases, 15 projects for theme 4: resilience and adaptation, 6 projects for theme 5: plant health related behaviours, and 5 projects for theme 6: evaluation.

Figure 3: Proportion of spend across research themes for the financial year 2022 to 2023. Of the total spend, theme 1: risk assessment and horizon scanning made up 16%, theme 2: inspections, diagnostics and surveillance made up 13%, theme 3: management of pests and diseases made up 27%, theme 4: resilience and adaptation made up 24%, theme 5: plant health related behaviours made up 10%, and theme 6: evaluation made up 10%.

Major research collaborations

Future Proofing Plant Health

Future Proofing Plant Health (FPPH) was established in 2014 as a collaboration between Defra, Fera Science Ltd, Forest Research, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Joint Nature Conservation Committee and Natural England, to consolidate plant health research and development requirements delivered by Defra network organisations and encourage greater collaboration across the department’s core science providers. Up to 20% of project funding is available to sub-contract external expertise to build networks and capability. Today, it provides almost £3 million of funding per annum to these core research providers and their third-party collaborators, with individual projects typically lasting up to 3 years and receiving funding up to £250,000. Some example projects are provided in case study 1 and case study 2.

Euphresco

Euphresco is an international network of organisations that fund plant health research projects. The overall goal is to support coordination and collaboration in the area of phytosanitary research, and to maintain a long-term network of research stakeholders. More than 70 organisations from over 50 countries are members of Euphresco. By working collaboratively and coordinating at national levels, countries can access specialist equipment, resources or expertise which means more progress can be made to reduce the effect of plant pests on the economy, the environment and the health of citizens of each country and also at the European and international level.

Defra has engaged with the Euphresco network since it was first established in 2006. In the financial year 2022 to 2023, Defra contributed more than £230,000 to UK research organisations leading or participating in work across 13 Euphresco research projects in 29 countries. For example, Fera Science Ltd are currently co-leading a project with Plant and Food Research, New Zealand to develop pre-emptive assessments of possible biological control agents for priority pests before they arrive. The project involves 17 partners in 12 countries and has developed a framework and considered biological control approaches for 12 pests.

Centre for Forest Protection

The Centre for Forest Protection (CFP) was launched in May 2022 with a mission to enhance the resilience of the UK’s forests, woodlands and trees and protect them from environmental and socioeconomic threats, through the provision of evidence, interdisciplinary research, expert advice and training.

The virtual centre is led by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Forest Research and brings together tree health expertise from across the UK and the rest of the world.

Between 2022 and 2025, Defra is contributing over £5 million to support 14 research projects, including 4 PhDs and 8 internships. Projects focus on novel approaches to tree health, and strongly encourage international collaboration. This funding is also supporting the development of a new MSc in Forest Protection and a suite of new professional and technical training modules. The CFP has its own website which will host a knowledge hub. Much of the research on tree and woodland resilience is led through the CFP, in particular studies combining genomic and other approaches to understand the possibilities for treescapes which are more tolerant to pests and diseases, such as ash dieback, Dutch elm disease, and acute oak decline.

UK Research and Innovation

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is a non-departmental public body which brings together the 7 disciplinary research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. UKRI invests in basic, strategic and applied innovation and research, including long term programmes of strategic research. Whenever possible Defra works with UKRI to meet our shared objectives. For example, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Defra and the Scottish Government recently co-funded the £19 million Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme. The first phase was the £5 million BRIGIT research project to understand potential transmission routes of Xylella. The second phase comprises 8 projects which address a range of threats to crops and trees from bacterial plant pathogens. Similarly, the NERC Future of UK Treescapes Programme began in 2021 and provides £14.5 million for projects, fellowships and knowledge exchange activities to inform decision making on the expansion and resilience of current and future treescapes. It is co-funded by Defra, Welsh and Scottish Governments, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Figure 4: Researcher capturing and identifying spittlebugs for the BRIGIT research project (source: John Innes Centre).

International Plant Sentinel Network

The International Plant Sentinel Network (IPSN) was established in 2013 as a collaboration between botanic gardens and arboreta and plant health scientists around the world. IPSN is coordinated by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), with currently more than 80 participating gardens from over 20 nations. Defra plant health’s support of the IPSN seeks to aid our international surveillance, gathering evidence to fill gaps in knowledge about new and emerging plant pests and pathogens. For example, monitoring the spread of emerald ash borer in Eastern Europe. IPSN also seeks to improve capability and capacity building, offering scientific training and resources in support of plant health.

Living Ash Project

Defra have invested in the Living Ash Project, a 5 year collaborative partnership between the Future Trees Trust, Forest Research, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Fera Ltd running until 2024. The Living Ash Project is identifying trees with a high degree of tolerance to ash dieback, collecting graft wood from them, and planting them out in a national archive on the public forest estate for further research. The Future Trees Trust and Forest Research are working with Kew to screen trees and investigate techniques to successfully take cuttings of ash in order to avoid the need for grafting. The team is also working with Fera Science Ltd to investigate the chemical component of the trees and identify the molecules associated with tolerance.

Action Oak

The Action Oak partnership was launched in 2018 to lead vital work and research to protect our native oak trees and safeguard their future. Currently there are over 30 different organisations involved in Action Oak, and it has supported the funding of 11 PhDs. The steering committee is comprised of:

Duchy of Cornwall
Woodland Heritage
Woodland Trust
National Trust
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Forestry Commission
Forest Research
Defra
Scottish Government
Welsh Government

The partnership is designed to be collaborative, innovative and committed to research. It encourages knowledge exchange and shares findings with practitioners, raises public awareness and appreciation of our native oaks and the important role they play in our landscape.

Observatree

Observatree is a collaborative approach to increase tree health monitoring and reporting and support the work of plant health professionals. Led by Forest Research, Observatree brings together the skills and experience of the Forestry Commission, Scottish Forestry, Welsh Government, Defra, APHA, Fera Science Ltd, The National Trust, and the Woodland Trust. Observatree volunteers form a UK network of over 200 citizen scientists who undertake a range of surveys to assist with spotting new tree pests and diseases and monitoring the spread of those that already exist. Volunteers are supported by a range of high quality and accessible training resources that focus on the identification and reporting of priority pests and diseases of highest concern.

Co-ordinating plant health research and development support with others

The UK Plant Health Evidence Co-ordination Group is a core component of the UK Plant Health Service (PHS) and co-ordinates research activities to inform official risk assessment, outbreak response, and surveillance strategies. The group is jointly chaired with the devolved administrations and aims to join-up on evidence needs and delivery across the governance framework (figure 5). The Plant Health Evidence Coordination Group considers how best to deliver against these evidence needs in a coordinated fashion by sharing research requirements and outputs with the plant health outbreak evidence groups (who then deliver through the incident management teams), the plant health research and development programmes in Defra, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and the external evidence programmes, for example, UKRI and Forestry Commission’s Science and Innovation Strategy for British Forestry (SIS). Input is provided from lead government departments and incident management teams.

Please refer to annex 3 of the provisional UK common framework on plant health for a complete overview of the UK Plant Health Governance Structure.

Figure 5: Simplified representation of how the Plant Health Evidence Coordination Group brings together the evidence needs from the Plant Health Outbreak Readiness Board and Plant Health Risk Group, all within the UK National Plant Protection Organisation.

Additionally, Defra maintains ongoing, informal discussion with research commissioned in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, such as that led by the Scottish Plant Health Centre.

Tree health research is also a priority theme of the science and innovation strategy for forestry in Great Britain. Its delivery is led by Forest Research and is co-ordinated by the 3 nations under devolution agreements and governance mechanisms which Defra participate in.

Within Defra, the Plant Health Evidence and Analysis Team co-ordinates plant health research and development activities with other evidence teams and with oversight of the Defra Central Science Team. There is close liaison with teams working on forestry, animal health, farming, horticulture, pesticides and invasive non-native species to ensure that research commissioning complements, rather than duplicates, activities. For example, research on managing non-regulated pests and diseases of crops is covered by Defra farming science and pesticides teams with whom integrated pest management is a joint priority. Adaptation of trees, forests and woodlands to biotic and abiotic threats is a joint priority with Defra’s Forestry Team. We also work closely with other plant health research customers such as Forestry Commission.

Our research programme is also co-ordinated with other government-funded plant heath research activities, including UKRI through the UK partnership for animal and plant health and bilateral discussions. Significant amounts of plant health research are supported by others. UKRI supports basic, strategic and applied innovation and research as set out in UKRI’s strategy (2022 to 2027), with a focus on its 6 strategic themes. BBSRC provides strategic support, which includes development of facilities and research infrastructure, for several research centres, including the John Innes Centre, Rothamstead Research, Earlham Institute and the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Science. In addition, the Plant Health Institute Strategic Programme is a cross institute programme between the John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory, which focuses on research to understand the mechanisms of infection of plants by pathogens, knowledge which is being used to drive the development of crops more resistant to disease. A significant amount of basic research is also carried out by the wider academic community, especially in universities.

In addition, research and development activities are delivered by a wide range of public, commercial and not-for-profit providers to meet their own plant health needs. Expertise ranges across the forestry, horticulture, agriculture and environmental sectors. Examples include Agricultural Development and Advisory Service (ADAS), the Royal Horticultural Society, the Tree Council and the Woodland Trust. We engage closely with these groups, for example via our Tree Health Policy Group and our Plant Health Advisory Forum. A simplified map of this wider plant health research landscape is provided in figure 6.

Figure 6: Simplified plant health research system map.

Question 5

Chapter 3: Future research priorities

Accepted Answer

This chapter outlines the future research required to support delivery of Defra’s policy objectives and statutory responsibilities. 6 linked research themes are proposed. For each theme high-level needs are described followed by more specific areas of focus. The indicative research questions are not prescriptive as evidence needs will change over time, but they provide a guide to the currently identified knowledge or tool gaps. These evidence needs will be further prioritised and refined for specific research commissioning calls moving forward. This section explores the indicative research questions for each area of focus within the 6 research themes.

Theme 1 – Risk assessment and horizon scanning

Risk and horizon scanning activities help to ensure better preparation for the potential arrival of pests and pathogens, and inform the development of our regulatory regime, particularly the establishment of phytosanitary measures.

Supported by the UK Plant Health Risk Group (PHRG), Defra’s own analysts appraise and monitor threats of individual pests and diseases using the UK Plant Health Risk Register. However, further research approaches are required to understand pest and pathogen biology, risk factors and pathways, climatic modelling, and host vulnerability to allow us to better understand likely impacts and behaviours of known pests and novel threats and to prepare for them.

Theme 1 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 1.1 Pest and pathogen biology, risk analysis, and host vulnerability

What are the risks from exotic plant pests and pathogens and what are their likely pathways to, and establishment in, the UK?
What host ranges are at risk and what UK sectors and geographic areas might be vulnerable?
What are the risks associated with different plant materials or commodities, in particular seeds and plant products such as timber?
Are there specific risks or benefits associated with pests and pathogens newly arriving, for example new strains of existing diseases?
Are beneficial organisms, such as natural enemies, also arriving or present in UK, and how are they likely to interact with plant pests and diseases?

Theme 1.2 Novel horizon scanning

Is it possible to predict what species may become future pests and diseases in the UK?
How might climate change and other stresses combine to affect the introduction and establishment of plant pests and diseases, and the range and susceptibility of hosts in the UK?
Where are the most likely origins of new plant pests and disease risks to the UK?
What are the optimal ways to detect and intercept pests and diseases at our borders?
What are the impacts and risks associated with changing patterns of global trade and other geo-political events and trends?

Theme 1.3 Biosecurity and farming innovation

What plant health risks might be associated with new crops and new agronomy practices in the UK?

Theme 2 - Inspections, diagnostics, and surveillance

The cost of eradicating plant pests and diseases after they have entered the country is far greater than the costs of preventing them. Therefore, our regulatory regime prohibits or controls the imports of high-risk plants, other planting material, plant products, wood and wood products. Import inspections help to confirm compliance and provide intelligence on possible new and emerging issues. To ensure the most efficient and effective approaches requires the development and validation of detection and diagnostic methods and use of modelling to optimise sampling.

While border checks are important, pests and diseases may be hard to detect or latent when materials cross the border. Furthermore, some pests and diseases can arrive independently, for example by air. The regime therefore also includes inspections at nursery sites and wider surveillance in urban and rural environments, including ariel surveillance and citizen science. Again, research can optimise and enhance these activities, particularly through the development and deployment of innovation and new technologies.

New approaches to modelling the distribution and spread of newly emerging and existing pests and pathogens in the UK is also a priority need.

Theme 2 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 2.1 Technologies for detection of pests and pathogens at inspection sites

How can the use of technologies be optimised to provide fast, accurate and cost-effective detection in support of our new border arrangements?
What further technologies can be developed, validated, and quality assured ready for deployment, and how can this best be achieved?
What technologies can be used to detect pests and pathogens in different media including on plants, seeds, soil and in water?

Theme 2.2 Making best use of the diagnostic toolkit

How should the most effective diagnostic technologies for different scenarios and objectives be assessed, and when and where we deploy different technologies be optimised?
How can synergies between methods be exploited (for example, using genomic and isotope analysis to investigate origins of an outbreak)?

Theme 2.3 Surveillance of the wider environment

How can the extent of presence (or absence) of a pest or pathogen, and its hosts, in the landscape be reliably demonstrated?
What approaches could be used to manage the volume of indicative presence data that might be generated by new genomic approaches?
What are the best proximate and remote sensing data collection technologies and platforms for surveying for plant health threats and how can these be operationalised in the UK?
What technologies can be used for surveying the presence of organisms associated with pests and diseases, including vectors and predators?
How can citizens best contribute to supporting surveillance in the wider environment?

Theme 2.4 Modelling and monitoring epidemiology and spread of outbreaks

How can we enhance the modelling and monitoring of pest and disease epidemiology?
Can the impact of climate change, and other factors such as biodiversity decline, on pest or disease epidemiology be predicted, and how can this prediction be integrated into wider considerations?

Figure 7: Researchers assessing for Ips species in the field (source: Forest Research)

Theme 3 - Management of pests and diseases

The Plant Health Outbreak Readiness Board (PHORB) oversees development of both generic and pest specific contingency plans to ensure rapid and effective responses in the event of an outbreak, including both legislation and advice for industry and landowners. Research can facilitate the development of appropriate treatments or management strategies to eradicate or reduce risk and allow recovery. This should include integrated pest and disease management, nature-based solutions such as biological control, guidance and toolkits for landowners, and data management tools.

Theme 3 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 3.1 Optimising and enhancing management approaches

What further preparation is required for high-risk quarantine pests and diseases not currently present in the UK, such as emerald ash borer and Xylella fastidiosa?
What are the best management approaches for priority pests and disease outbreaks in the UK, such as ash dieback, sweet chestnut blight, oak processionary moth, Ips typographus, and tomato viruses to reduce risks and effects?
What is the best management approach in different scenarios?
How can the trade-offs between plant health objectives and the need to protect human health, carbon capture, ecosystem services and other costs and benefits associated with plants and trees be optimised?
What management methods may be unavailable in future and how might they be substituted?
How can we encourage better uptake of effective management options, and ensure that they are acceptable and practicable in the long term?

Theme 3.2 Innovation in integrated pest and disease management and natural control methods

How might existing and novel landscapes support integrated pest management (IPM) strategies to manage pest and disease outbreaks?
What tools can we use to effectively manage pests and disease outbreaks whilst minimising chemical inputs and activities (including use of alternatives as part of an IPM approach, endophytes, biological control agents such as natural enemies, biopesticides and bacteriophages)?

Theme 4 - Resilience and adaptation

Resilience and adaptation are key to the long term health and sustainability of our ecosystems under increased pressure from pests and diseases. Research can help in improving the diversity, health, condition and connectivity of plants and ecosystems to enhance resilience against pests and diseases. Research will also help us to improve our understanding plant genetic variation and the genetic basis for plant tolerance to pests and diseases.

Theme 4 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 4.1 Adapting to pests and diseases

What is the genetic basis for plant resistance and tolerance to priority pests and diseases, what degree of tolerance is useful and how can this be quantified?
Are there trade-offs or complementarities between tolerances to different pests and diseases and/or other adaptive traits?
How can we identify tolerant plants in the field, quantify their tolerance, and conserve these genetic resources for further research and use?
What are the possibilities to encourage and enhance natural selection for tolerant plants in the landscape, and how can we predict the likely speed and effectiveness of this approach?
What are the possibilities to use new genetic understanding and techniques to develop accelerated breeding programmes for tolerance to key pests and diseases and what are the associated risks and benefits?
Are there opportunities to re-introduce populations of species that have been decimated by key pests and diseases (for example, ash and elm)?
How can we enhance the ability of plant populations to evolve to deal with new threats, for instance through removing barriers to regeneration?
How can we ensure that our future plant populations are able to adapt to simultaneous additional threats, such as climate change?

Theme 4.2 Planting for resilience

How can we improve the diversity, health, condition and connectivity of our planting and landscapes to make them healthier and more resilient to pests and diseases?
To what extent does enhanced diversity (at species and genetic levels) of planting increase resilience to pests and diseases?
How can we assess and manipulate the biotic and abiotic conditions in the landscape that might affect susceptibility to pests and diseases in order to support plant health?
Can different production, planting and management techniques be utilised to support resilience and biosecurity objectives?
Can we make recommendations about optimum species choice for replanting after a pest or disease outbreak (based on species or ecosystem functioning, site characteristics, and biodiversity support)?
Can we identify areas that have suffered from the effects of pests and diseases, and target planting to these areas, to aid ecosystem recovery?

Theme 5 - Plant health behaviours

Understanding what motivates and constrains individuals and groups to achieve positive plant health outcomes and good biosecurity. Overcoming the knowledge to action gap and improving our knowledge of the economic, environmental, and social and cultural values of healthy plants.

Theme 5 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 5.1 Building societal support for plant health objectives

How do we raise awareness and build understanding of plant health issues to deliver plant health objectives?
How do we design interventions to bring about a sense of shared responsibility and positive behaviour change?
What are the current behaviours in retail and trade and how can we design interventions that not only respond to, but also influence, changes in demand and supply, their associated supply chains and trading patterns?

Theme 5.2 Addressing the knowledge to action gap

What are the knowledge needs of different stakeholder groups?
How can we improve systems of knowledge production and dissemination to ensure that knowledge is put into practice?

Theme 5.3 Understanding value at risk

What are the values at risk from plant pests and diseases (with a focus on current knowledge gaps, for example social and cultural values, and the value of non-woodland trees)?
How can an improved understanding of the value at risk be used to improve decision-making, drive positive behaviour change, and inform the necessary trade-offs between costs and benefits of threats to plant health and our management of them?

Theme 6 - Evaluation

Developing evaluation frameworks, indicators and metrics to help us measure the effects of our plant health policies, programmes and projects.

Theme 6 indicative research questions categorised by the high-level needs that they address:

Theme 6.1 Designing and carrying out evaluation to support learning and improved policy making

How can we design and deliver impactful evaluation to assess progress against the visions, outcomes and commitments set out in our strategies and plans, and to track, measure, evaluate and learn from policy, programme and project delivery?
What metrics, indicators and datasets to we need to develop to support evaluation?
How can we engage with partners and stakeholders so that evaluation and learning informs successful collaboration and joined-up working?

Case study 1: Understanding and utilising ash tree resistance to ash dieback

Since ash dieback was discovered in Britain in 2012, Defra has funded research to understand genetic resistance to the ash dieback fungus, and to collect trees displaying a degree of resistance into a living archive for a potential future breeding programme. Recent work has included Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Future Trees Trust, Forest Research, and Fera Science Ltd as partners, while earlier work involved co-funding of BBRSC and NERC grants to institutions including: the Earlham Institute, Queen Mary University of London, University of Oxford and the John Innes Centre.

The genetic research has resulted in the sequenced genome of ash trees^{[footnote 1]}, the genome sequence of the fungus^{[footnote 2]}, the identification of locations in the ash tree genome thought to be associated with resistance to the fungus^{[footnote 3]} and further data on how many ash trees might die^{[footnote 4]}. This new understanding is informing exploration of strategies for retention of ash in UK landscapes. Defra has also consulted British publics and stakeholders on the acceptability of different genetic solutions to tree epidemics^{[footnote 5]}.

This body of research on ash has developed innovative ways of using new genomics technologies and analyses for tree health issues, which are now being deployed for other tree species through the Centre for Forest Protection. The UK now has world class plant health capability in the area of tree pathogen resistance genomics.

Concurrently, the Ash Archive has been developed through the Living Ash Project, which has conducted the world’s largest screening trials for resistant trees and has planted over 3,000 trees of 1,000 genotypes in the archive. They have been drawn from a wide geographic spread, and new trees will continue to be added, to maximise the genetic diversity in the collection and facilitate the possibility of a future breeding programme of resistant ash.

Together, this research aligns with our strategic objectives on enhancing understanding of plant health issues, developing and deploying innovation and new technologies, and providing world class plant health research capability.

Question 6

Chapter 4: Research approaches

Accepted Answer

Chapter 1 outlined our strategic research objectives, which are to:

enhance understanding and knowledge of plant health issues and solutions to protect the UK
provide evidence on which to develop risk-based policy approaches, and to enable our delivery partners and practitioners to make robust decisions and take action
develop and deploy innovation and new technologies in support of our plant health policy objectives
provide world class plant health capability

This chapter outlines how Defra’s plant health research programme will be developed, to deliver our strategic objectives.

Collaborative working and utilising world class capability

Defra will continue to participate and proactively engage in the research collaborations outlined in chapter 2 to deliver our strategic objectives and optimise the outcomes of our research.

Collaboration and co-ordination with other funders will also continue to ensure complementarity in approaches and best use of resource to meet our shared objectives. Shared areas of interest have already been identified with UKRI and these will be developed into tangible new co-funded research activities as part of delivery of this research plan. Novel approaches to co-funding research will be pursued, for example supporting a new post to leverage further funding for Action Oak.

Collaboration between plant health researchers both at home and internationally will be facilitated through ongoing support to networks such as Action Oak, FPPH, and Euphresco. This will provide access to world class research infrastructure, expertise and resources and ensure researchers learn from one another. This ambition will be particularly supported through the Centre for Forest Protection, which has a vision to become a global hub and already brings together the facilities and expertise of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Forest Research with partners such as BiFor and INRAE-BETA France. Where appropriate, and of significant benefit, Defra may also support UK researchers to participate in EU-funded research networks.

Co-design and knowledge transfer and exchange

Co-design of research projects and knowledge exchange throughout project lifetimes is vital to ensure problems are fully understood and appropriate solutions are developed, shared, and implemented to provide maximum effect.

At a programme level, we will consult policy teams and delivery agencies throughout the project cycle to ensure research calls meet their needs. Defra will support knowledge exchange events such as the FPPH project seminar series and an annual FPPH research meeting. A plant health research event will be delivered in 2023 in order to bring together research providers and research users to discuss plant health needs. Furthermore, a new dedicated area on the Plant Health Portal will be developed to better share research outputs from Defra-funded activities. The Centre for Forest Protection will be supported to develop its online Knowledge Hub and translation of research findings into education and training materials.

Defra-funded research projects will continue to be required to demonstrate appropriate co-design, learning from flagship projects such as the oak processionary moth (OPM) project outlined in case study 2. All research projects will require a knowledge transfer and exchange plan. Projects are required to provide a final report to Defra for publication, but they are also strongly encouraged to present research findings to relevant stakeholders and publish peer reviewed academic literature.

Figure 8: Oak processionary moth (OPM) (source: The Tree Council)

Facilitating innovation

Putting innovation at the heart of our approach and investing in world-class knowledge, products and technologies will not only help to protect plant health but also drive scientific growth and create skilled jobs for our sector.

Through our interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches, opportunities to make use of cutting-edge science and emerging technologies can be identified and applied to plant health challenges. For example, advances in genomics have revolutionised plant health science. DNA diagnostics are rapidly advancing, with the ability to quickly detect pathogens in different media and understand the epidemiology of pest and disease outbreaks. However, challenges and opportunities remain to embed such technologies within our biosecurity regime. Defra will continue to work with research partners to drive improvements in such innovations, and to assess the feasibility of their application in a routine operational context. Our research must not just develop new technologies but also validate, quality-assure and optimise technologies to ensure they are effective and provide good value for money.

There are barriers to the adoption of new technologies in our plant health regime and industries and we will work to actively understand and address these. For example, plant growers can lack the skills or financial security to take risks with new technology and have indicated they require support via pilot and demonstration projects. We will scope and aim to launch an Innovation Fund to understand and overcome some of these challenges and barriers to the market.

Supporting a research skills infrastructure

All the ambitions outlined in this plan are founded on an assumption that there is a thriving community of skilled plant health researchers and well-resourced research centres available to support research needs. However, previous reports have noted the need to develop plant health skills and creation of a wider community of trained plant health professionals, and this need remains. Therefore, a fundamental part of Defra’s plant health research and development plan is ensuring a skills pipeline and training the next generation of plant health researchers.

The research projects that Defra commission provide important opportunities for researchers at all levels to further their work. In addition, we will actively support specific interventions to develop scientific capability. In the financial year 2022 to 2023, Defra provided funding support to 14 PhDs with topics ranging from potential effects of Xylella on native trees, to modelling plant trade networks and their effects on plant diseases. Defra will continue to support students, for example by working with UKRI and others to support doctoral training partnerships. In the financial year 2023 to 2024 Defra is also supporting NERC Future Treescapes Fellowships, and a Plant Health Future Leader Fellowship at Kew.

Training programmes, apprenticeships, and internships are also important to build wider plant health skills. In the financial year 2022 to 2023 Defra funded 8 interns at Kew and Forest Research through the Centre for Forest Protection and hope to repeat this scheme in future years. The Centre will also launch both a new master of sciences in Forest Protection and professional training options by 2025.

Defra also supports core plant health science capability in government, for example, through investment in new capital equipment and infrastructure projects such as the Forest Research Holt Laboratory.

Defra recognises the high value of long-term collections, including diagnostic collections at Fera Science Ltd, entomology and pathology collections at Forest Research, and the vast collections at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and where appropriate contributes to the maintenance and use of long-term study sites.

Case study 2: Research approaches to identify alternative control methods for oak processionary moth (OPM)

This project, which is led by Fera Science Ltd and Forest Research, funded through Defra’s Future Proofing Plant Health programme, aims to develop and test control methods for oak processionary moth (OPM) which could provide alternatives to standard chemical treatment. The project has adopted a strong co-design approach, working with stakeholders to ensure the alternative strategies are appropriate and acceptable for implementation in the field. Engaging stakeholders in experimental design created opportunities from the start to develop OPM control options that meet the needs of those who manage OPM and that are sensitive to the different contexts and risks where OPM is present. These have included nature-based solutions, the use of pheromones to disrupt mating behaviour, and biopesticides which may provide more targeted control which is less harmful to non-target organisms than currently used methods. Working groups with strong participation from end-users and stakeholders support the ongoing research, enabling effective knowledge sharing and increasing the likelihood of uptake and deployment of the various methods under investigation. The project has also been linking to similar projects in Europe, with the aim of sharing results to enhance protection against this pest in all the participating countries.

Alongside this project, Defra is supporting 2 PhDs to investigate further options and build skills capability in this area. The first, based at Newcastle University, has been investigating parasitism of OPM caterpillars by Carcelia iliaca which affects OPM eggs, larvae and pupae. The PhD student is developing a robust Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay for testing parasitism as well as mapping the distribution of C.iliaca and its implications for management decisions. The second PhD student, based at Fera Science Ltd, is aiming to develop selective biopesticides for use against a range of moth pests to help reduce use of chemical pesticides whilst not increasing the effects on non-target species in oak trees.

Question 7

Chapter 5: Research commissioning, quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation approaches

Accepted Answer

Commissioning approaches

A range of commissioning and procurement approaches will continue to be used to enable us to work with as wide a range of research providers as possible, whilst meeting our needs for timely delivery of projects.

Research specifications will be developed as required to meet specific needs and these will be delivered via direct awards or open tender competitions as appropriate. The new Defra research development and evidence procurement framework is particularly useful in this regard and will be an important means for future research procurement. We will also continue to use Defra’s animal and plant health modelling framework and Defra’s strategic relationship with Fera Science Ltd, as a joint venture body, for the delivery of applied and responsive research and development services. The animal and plant health modelling framework allows Defra to commission modelling from plant health experts in the event of an outbreak or to assess pest management strategies and risk levels. Organisations currently on the modelling framework include Cambridge University, Newcastle University, Fera Science Ltd, Met Office and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Formal partnerships between governmental organisations based on memoranda of understanding (MOU), that provide support to research partnerships, such as the FPPH partnership and the CFP, will continue to be developed and used when appropriate. We also have a specific project led by the Met Office focused on developing and validating microclimate models for estimating pest risk using the UK climate-pest risk web tool and assessing the risk posed by forestry pests and pathogens under current and future projected climates, to be delivered via a MOU.

Approaches to deliver collaborations with other research funders to leverage maximum value for limited funds and avoid duplication of effort, will be developed, in particular with UKRI.

Defra has a comprehensive internal and external review process in place to ensure the highest quality of research is commissioned, delivered, and published, providing evidence that is relevant, reliable and clear.

Different approaches are taken with individual programmes such as FPPH, Euphresco and CFP. However, project proposals across all programmes are moderated and reviewed by an experienced and multidisciplinary panel to ensure projects can produce required research to the appropriate standards and provide value for money.

Each research project is assigned a lead Defra Project Officer who will meet at least quarterly with the lead researcher to discuss progress with the work. This time allows for monitoring of progress against milestones, issue resolution, and regular discussion of research direction and opportunities to optimise knowledge exchange and the project’s wider effects. At the end of each project, the outputs and outcomes of projects are reviewed via a project appraisal document process and further opportunities are considered to ensure project outputs are shared with relevant research users and the wider research community.

Where we co-fund programmes, we will maintain oversight by actively engaging in the partnership. This could include membership of steering committees, via programme reporting mechanisms and direct contact with research teams.

All Defra-funded project publications go through internal review process, with systems available to draw on external expert reviewers where additional assurance is felt beneficial or required in line with Defra guidance on high-value contacts. In addition to journal publications and other outputs of projects, all project reports are made publicly available via the Defra Science publication database.

Figure 9: Detection of Ips typographus carried out by Forest Research (source: Forest Research)

Monitoring and evaluation

Ongoing monitoring and evaluation is vital to assess Defra’s progress against the objectives and commitments set out in this plan, and to track, measure, and learn from its delivery. Evidence of success will support future funding bids, particularly via comprehensive spending reviews. The theory of change, presented in annex 2, summarises the intended route to achieving Defra’s intended outcomes and impacts of this plan.

The theory of change identifies outputs, outcomes, and impacts that this plan will support. It is important to note that these impacts are driven by a broad set of actions and actors implicated by the wider plant health ‘system’, not just those implicated by the plant health research and development plan. As such, evaluation of these impacts will be carried out as part of the plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain (2023 to 2028) and the tree health resilience strategy (2018). The role of the plant health research and development plan evaluation is to capture the contribution made by a set of defined research and development outputs and outcomes to that broader set of strategic objectives.

Annual monitoring of delivery of expected outputs from this research and development plan will be carried out using quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs), starting in the financial year 2023 to 2024, and where possible comparing to earlier baselines.

In addition, we will collaborate with our research providers to develop case studies and qualitative examples to illustrate and evaluate progress towards the outcomes described in our theory of change and assess whether and how the 4 plant health research approaches are supporting their delivery. Projects to be used as case studies will be identified at inception stage to follow and record how approaches unfold from the project start so that we can learn what’s working and not working over the course of a given project’s development. The resulting case studies will therefore include both projects which have excelled and those that may not have delivered all the benefits that were expected, with a focus on identifying inflection points that had critical effect on delivery of outcomes and impacts. In addition, projects which are identified as exemplars (or failures) of our research approaches at the mid or end of project stage may also be developed into case studies as appropriate. We will share these case studies with our research providers and research users to enable further development of our approaches.

Question 8

Annex 1: Defra plant health research activities in the 2022 to 2023 financial year mapped to areas of focus (excludes co-funded UKRI research programme projects)

Accepted Answer

Theme 1 – Risk assessment and horizon scanning

Theme 1.1 Pest and pathogen biology, risk analysis, and host vulnerability

CFP: Horizon scanning for tree health – an innovative horizon scanning approach to identify emerging threats to UK non-native forestry trees and guide preventative measures.

CFP: Predicting risk to non-native trees species from potential threats in the UK – assesses the likely susceptibility of non-native tree species to native pests and pathogens, based on the evolutionary distances between native plant species and potential non-native hosts.

FPPH: Investigation on potential susceptible hosts for Phytophthora pluvialis in forests, wider environment and horticulture – generating lists of susceptible host British plant species to P. pluvialis.

FPPH: Risk from Phytophthora pluvialis and its potential for long term persistence in affected forests – evaluating the extent to which the disease penetrates sapwood and whether the timber trade could be a vector. Also testing the long-term potential for survival if no host tree species are present.

FPPH: Assessing and mitigating the risks associated with wild collected seeds – uses biological screening and high-throughput sequencing of wild collected seeds to understand the associated microbial community and mitigate the risks associated with any pests which may be detected.

CFP: Abiotic predisposing factors for pests and diseases spatial risk modelling – performing spatial modelling to identify environmental predisposition to 3 significant tree disease epidemics in the UK.

Met Office modelling project – collaborative project creating a visual day degree model and aid for mapping scenarios such as egg hatch or flight times of significant pests.