Infected douglas fir cuttings from US destroyed

5.00pm

Biosecurity officials have seized and destroyed a shipment of douglas fir cuttings from the United States found to be infected with a fungal disease capable of wiping out New Zealand's pine forestry sector.

New Zealand has also suspended further imports of pine seed, seedling and tissue from the US.

The cuttings, imported nine months ago from the United States were in a quarantine facility at Kaiapoi near Christchurch when they were found to be infected by pine pitch canker, scientifically known as fusarium circinatum.

Douglas fir samples showing evidence of disease were sent to MAF.

There is no known cure or effective treatment for pine pitch canker, and the disease is widely regarded as the forestry equivalent of foot-and-mouth in farm livestock.

"There was sufficient evidence of the risk of contamination by pine pitch canker for us to order the controlled destruction of all of the seedling grafts in this consignment, which was completed yesterday," MAF's forest biosecurity Director Peter Thomson said in a statement.

Mr Thompson said that because the seedling grafts were in "secure quarantine" there was no risk to New Zealand's forests from this contamination.

" We have immediately suspended any further imports of pine pitch canker host material from the United States and will review our long-term requirements," he said.

The incident was unrelated to another investigation by MAF into allegations made by former Forest Research Institute staff that Pinus taeda (Loblolly pine) embryos imported in the mid-1990s were infected with pine pitch canker.

Coincidentally, as the trees were being placed in quarantine in February, at Kaiapoi, New Zealand foresters were gathering at Rotorua to attend a two-day national workshop on pine pitch canker.

They were told by Bill Dyck, a former technology manager for Carter Holt Harvey forests, the canker was taking such a toll on radiata pine in its native habitat -- central California -- that it might effectively wipe out the species there.

"Pine pitch canker has caused so much damage to natural pine forests in California in the past decade that radiata pine has been classified an endangered species," Mr Dyck said at the time.

"We'd be foolish to think it will never get here". The fungus has accidentally spread to South Africa, Chile, Spain and Japan in recent years.

According to a tree geneticist who has worked in California as a consultant for New Zealand forestry companies, pine pitch canker researchers have discovered no other species was as vulnerable to the fungus as the radiata pine -- the main tree grown in New Zealand.

Radiata provide most of the annual turnover of $5 billion and exports of $3.7 billion, that make forestry New Zealand's third largest export sector. Forestry contributes 12.6 per cent of total exports, 4 per cent of GDP, and employs 23,000 New Zealanders directly.

The infected douglas firs were high-value grafted seedlings being imported to be grown in New Zealand as seed stock, to harvest health seed for re-export to the United States, a MAF spokesman said today.

He did not know which company had imported them, where they came from in the United States, who exported the trees, or the quarantine standard which applied at the Kaiapoi nursery.

- NZPA