Vineyard owners should ask visitors where they have been in the past three weeks, rather than eight days. As advised in our January e-news, this change has been prompted by improved knowledge of phylloxera survival rates.
We subsequently changed our Top 10 Farm-gate Hygiene Risks Poster, which you can download here.
“I require everyone to report on arrival at my property. I keep a visitor log, recording vineyard regions each visitor has visited in the past 3 weeks and check whether there has been a visit to a vineyard in a Phylloxera Infested or Risk Zone in Victoria, New South Wales or Queensland.”
As pruning season comes to an end and growing season activities begin, we feel the time is right to remind growers of this change from eight days to three weeks. In spring and summer, the risk of phylloxera transfer and spread is heightened as phylloxera start to migrate above ground and crawl around on the soil surface, vine trunks, leaves, shoots and on grape bunches.
We encourage all growers to focus on asking visitors including contractors where they have been in the past three weeks prior to coming onsite, and to alter any currently used visitor registers to reflect this change, or to use our Word Visitor Register Template, which you can download here (see Tip 1).