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Pest and Disease Index (PDI) Tool Launched

01 Dec 2021 | BALI Member News

The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a Pest and Disease Index (PDI) tool intended to help operators authorised to issue plant passports comply with plant health regulations.

Plant health regulations stipulate operators authorised to issue plant passports should have a knowledge of pests which are relevant to the plants they trade in.   This PDI tool therefore helps operators comply with plant health regulations.

The PDI tool is ‘host driven’ rather than ‘pest driven’ which means the tool can be used to search for commodities the operator trades in and the pests applicable to them, along with whether that pest is present in the UK, the most likely pathways of entry if it is not present, what special requirements in legislation are relevant to that pest, and what the mitigated and unmitigated risk rating of the pest is.

As well as the Further Reading section of this newsletter, the UK Plant Health Information Portal may be used to download the PDI tool. 

Note: The UK Plant Health Information Portal is an excellent source of information regarding all aspects of plant health including plant passports and associated guidance.  Please see the Further Reading section of this newsletter for a link to the UK Plant Health Portal. 

Further reading:

Pest and Disease Index (Download)
Pest and Disease Index User Guide
UK Plant Health Information Portal

Written by Association Technical Officer Owen Baker.

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