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species within North America by managing and publishing Official Pest Reports from NAPPO member
countries. Nine Official Pest Reports have been published (8 from the U. S. and 1 from Canada) since
November 1, 2022. The NAPPO Secretariat would like to welcome Rajesh Ramarathnam (CFIA) who
has returned to the EG and thank Naima Ait Oumejjout (CFIA) for her contributions.

Forest Quarantine Research Group (FQRG). Current FQRG discussions include heat
treatment parameters for wood products and how to get consensus on which treatment parameters to
use in our region.

Furthering the implementation of Risk-Based Sampling. The RBS module
content was translated, and all voice content was recorded in Spanish. The NAPPO IT specialist is
building the module using the Storyline 360 (Articulate) software. Completion of this project is
expected for the 2nd quarter of 2023.

A revision of RSPM 35 “Guidelines for the movement of Stone and Pome Fruit Trees and Grapevines
into a NAPPO Member Country” was recently finalized under the adroit leadership of CFIA’s Sarah
Brearey. From an industry perspective, this revision of RSPM 35 was most significant in removing
agents of unknown etiology (AUE), once thought to be viruses or virus-like entities, from the pest list in
the standard. The three U.S. industry participants on the group, Bill Howell and Mike Willett
(Northwest Nursery Improvement Institute) and Craig Regelbrugge (AmericanHort), were able to
provide both technical and anecdotal information to the group regarding specific pome fruit AUE,
including the observation that no disease had been detected in decades of field indexing otherwise
clean material.
Even prior to its publication, a review of the proposed standard by USDA APHIS PPQ Plants for
Planting resulted in a change to the testing and therapy permits issued to the U.S. National Clean
Plant Network-Fruit Tree centers. Modification of these permits eliminated a requirement for field
indexing for AUE, trimming three years off the pome fruit diagnostic protocols at these centers, putting
valuable plant materials in grower’s hands and getting high quality apple and pear cultivars to
consumers that much sooner.

The expert group’s consideration and confirmation of the information submitted by U.S. industry in
developing the standard is a clear example of how the NAPPO industry-regulatory collaboration
produced a standard that was successfully implemented for the benefit of agriculture without
compromising quarantine security.

By: Mike Willet, Craig Regelbrugge, and Bill Howell
Industry members of the NAPPO RSPM 35 EG

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