As part of leading South Australia’s Grapevine Red Blotch virus (GRBV) surveillance plan, Vinehealth Australia’s Technical Manager Suzanne McLoughlin has designed an excel workbook to assist the planning and collection phases of field sampling of grapevine virus testing and managing the receipt of results.
This knowledge management tool was built initially to facilitate sample collection for GRBV and endemic grapevine virus analysis from multiple SA sites and could easily be moulded to suit other types of diagnostic testing. The workbook has been gifted to members of the national GRBV working group for use and is also available more broadly on request.
“Ultimately having a system to allow for efficient and effective record keeping of our diagnostic results and the ability to interrogate and report out these results in multiple ways, including using this information for tracing purposes, is an aspect that we’re hoping to pursue as part of the build of our Digital Biosecurity Platform,” Suzanne said.
“This excel workbook is a very small window to what’s possible when we have an integrated textural and spatial system and the opportunities to tag results on a per vine basis are endless.
“While there are many great apps already out there for collecting in-field pest and disease surveillance results, our ultimate aim is to work towards having an integrated program available to vineyard owners and ourselves that assists with sample planning, provides a calculated level of confidence in results based on the testing regime chosen and a safe location to house analytical results, and provides an opportunity to visually monitor pest and disease spread and measure the impact of applied management strategies.“