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A four-year program has begun testing whether predatory flies can control giant pine scale, an exotic sap-sucking pest that Australian authorities can currently fight only by cutting infested trees down. Source: Timberbiz The project is worth more than $2.45 million, including $1.1 million from Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI), and is led by Agriculture Victoria through the Victorian Government Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. It is underpinned by a partnership with the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) and its members and runs to November 2029. Giant pine scale (Marchalina hellenica) feeds on the sap of pine, fir and spruce, and heavy infestations dry a tree out and kill it. Infestations in Australia are confined to urban areas of Melbourne and Adelaide rather than the commercial softwood estate the industry is working to protect, and tree removal remains the only available control measure. Earlier work funded by Forest and Wood Products Australia identified three predatory insects, silver flies from the genus Neoleucopis, as potential biological control agents. The new project evaluates those predators, maps current infestations and identifies priority release sites using remote sensing, with the aim of delivering a national management program that targets core infestations while rapidly detecting and controlling new and outlier ones. Paco Tovar, National Forest Biosecurity Manager at the Australian Forest Products Association, said the combination could contain the pest before it reached plantations. “Biocontrol plus smarter surveillance could turn a runaway softwood pest into a manageable pressure,” Tovar said in the AFWI Highlights Report 2024-2026, released in Canberra on Tuesday. Researchers at the Hellenic Agricultural Organisation in Greece, where the pest is native, and at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International in Switzerland are working on the program alongside Australian forest health specialists ArborCarbon. The work sits inside a wider AFWI forest resilience and biosecurity portfolio worth more than $4.5 million, including more than $2.2 million of the institute’s own investment. That portfolio covers climate-driven risk models for pine pests and diseases led by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, hardwood plantation pest management through Adelaide University, and pheromone push and pull systems and insecticide-treated netting as alternatives to broadscale spraying against Ips bark beetles. A University of the Sunshine Coast study due to report in September is testing whether a previously unrecognised parasitic nematode strain has been undermining the inoculation programs growers run against Sirex woodwasp.

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