USDA/APHIS INITIATIVES IN SUPPORT OF CISSIP

In 2007-2008, APHIS assisted in conducting capacity building workshops in Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, and Trinidad. These were conducted in partnership with several private and public cooperators from the Region. The workshops emphasized the need to eliminate pests at the source of imported agricultural products, so that clean product arrives at the ports of entry of the importing country. In collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) two capacity building workshops on scale insects and mealybugs of economic importance were held; one in Barbados for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States(OECS), and the second in Jamaica for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Bahamas, and Haiti. Between 2005 and 2008 APHIS assisted the Caribbean Region with surveys for the Red Palm Mite and the Giant African Snail. A USDA APHIS malacologist from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, PA, an entomologist from the APHIS Center for Plant Health Science and Technology (CPHST), and an acarologist from the USDA-ARS Systematic Entomology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland were assigned to upgrade the surveillance and pest identification skills of technical officers in the Caribbean Region. Financial assistance was provided for pest detection programs in Caribbean countries, in particular those targeted to Tephritid fruit flies, red palm mite, giant African land snail, and mealybugs. APHIS supported the Tephritid fruit fly trapping programme by providing trapping supplies to most countries in the region. APHIS cooperated with the Panama Ministry of Agriculture and the University of Panama to conduct plant pest surveys near the Panama Canal which is a major pathway for movement of commodities, and possibly plant pests, from Asia into the Greater Caribbean. The focus of these surveys has been on mealybugs, mites, wood borers and molluscs. APHIS provided support for regional meetings in the Caribbean concerned with the preparedness in the event the introduction of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza; these meetings resulted in the allocation of needed resources and strengthening safeguarding institutions in some countries. APHIS collaborated with CABI, CARICOM, CIRAD FAO and IICA in assembling Plant Health Directors of many Greater Caribbean countries with the objective developing coordinated programs to accomplish, in part, the desired outputs of the CISSIP proposal. In 2009 APHIS will continue its assistance to the Plant Health Directors Forum and the latter's technical working groups. APHIS helped implement the Caribbean Regional Diagnostic Network, a component of CISSIP, through the purchase of five state of the art internet connected distance digital diagnostic laboratory systems for deployment in five Caribbean countries