Horizon scanning for plant pests
Our work includes looking out for new threats to plant health in the European Union (EU) such as pests and diseases. We assist the EU legislators in responding in a timely manner to new threats from known and regulated plant pests as well as unknown and emerging ones.
We began this horizon scanning exercise in 2017 to support the implementation of the EU’s new plant health law at the request of the European Commission.
We scan news articles and scientific publications using the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS)tool to search for new information on possible threats and integrate this with the results from a tool called PeMoScoring for ranking risks from emerging pests.
The PeMoScoring tool, which allows us to characterise risks from pests on which there is limited information, is the result of years of collaborative work with the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES). The tool scores pests based on a set of 15 criteria, allowing them to be compared with a reference ranking system to identify their potential threat.
We publish the results in a monthly horizon scanning newsletter, providing readers with a summary of the news and key characteristics of each pest A living organism (e.g. an insect, rodent, weed, fungus or virus) that is harmful to plants and/or their products (e.g. seeds, fruits) species A subdivision of the genus, a species is a group of closely related and similar-looking organisms; for example, in the case of Homo sapiens (humans), the second part of the name (sapiens) represents the species mentioned. Our newsletters are accessible published in the EFSA Journal.
We share our newsletters on our Bluesky account on plant health and we present the results at meetings of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF Committee), an expert group made up of representatives of all EU countries and the European Commission.
The latest and past horizon scanning results are also available online in an interactive dashboard. The tool has 3 sections:
- Emerging pests: visualisation on a world map of non-regulated pests that have been detected and are posing new threats (e.g. being found in new areas of invasion, on new hosts, etc.);
- Priority pests: amount of traffic (in terms of number of items retrieved) for 20 pests that are regulated in the EU as ‘priority pests’ and therefore receive maximum attention from Member States (through public information campaigns to the public, annual surveys, contingency plans, simulation exercises, and action plans for their eradication);
- Newsletter Search Engine: search all items included in any published newsletter by selecting pest name, family, level of regulation and PeMoScoring results
The results of our PeMoScoring supports the decisions of EU legislators, for example on the need for a detailed follow-up assessment by EFSA of a particular threat.
The table below lists pests that we have identified as potential threats to the EU based on our PeMoScoring assessment and for which we received a request from the European Commission for a detailed follow-up assessment, called a pest categorisation.
Follow our work
- Follow the most recent updates from the dashboard
- Follow us on Bluesky to be informed about newsletters publication
Expert group
Experts in pest risk assessment, plant pathology, epidemiology, and ecology.