The FAO-developed SusaHamra system has been launched in Jordan as its official national red palm weevil monitoring application, becoming the second country after Tunisia which adopted the system for monitoring and surveying the pest in the affected areas. The system is powered by PlantVillage.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is reviewing its integrated biosecurity index tool essential in refining the measurement of biosecurity system status and progress at both national and sub-national levels, ensuring effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. At the national level, the index is envisioned as a planning tool, facilitating comprehensive assessments across ministries to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This comprehensive tool encompasses five critical sectors: aquatic and terrestrial animal health, plant health, food safety, and forestry/invasive species management. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations constructed five (5) Desert Locust centres in Yemen's key breeding areas. The initiative is part of the ongoing efforts to control & manage the pest in the Near East region. The Seiyun centre has been handed over to local authorities in Seiyun, in Hadramout governorate in Yemen. The country is one of the most significant Desert Locust breeding reservoirs in the region and the establishment of these Centres will mitigate pest outbreaks in the region and beyond.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has called for sustained locust management in Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA), based on long-term regional cooperation, monitoring and early warning systems, as well as advanced and safer control techniques, in particular biopesticides. The call was made at the side-event of the 34th session of the FAO Regional Conference for Europe (ERC34).

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in collaboration with Georgia State University, is developing a novel training approach using Virtual Reality (VR) to teach teams about locust surveys and controls during breeding and invasion. The platform will create an immersive environment where locust officers and trainees will get to interact with locusts in a virtual classroom.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presented the newly developed integrated biosecurity index (IBI) and assessment tool in support of the countries to analyze and manage risks associated with linkages between human, plant, and animal health and environment sectors. It is noted that inadequate controls in one sector can have far-reaching consequences for other sectors.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, visited Mauritania's National Centre for Desert Locust Control today as part of a two-day visit to the northwestern African country. The Director-General was accompanied by Mauritania's Minister of Agriculture, His Excellency Umm Ould Bibateh, who underscored the importance of the visit in opening up promising horizons in the longstanding cooperation between Mauritania and FAO.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has called for ‘’robust coordination’’ between countries and regions in efforts to prevent and combat the scourge of desert locusts. “Desert locust – as migratory pest – cannot be controlled by one single country or one single entity,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol told participants at a high-level webinar today.

Experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have called on countries to invest in prevention measures against the Banana Fusarium Wilt caused by Tropical Race 4 (TR4) as it is key to control and delay the spread of the disease into new areas.  

Banana cultivation in Tanzania is being threatened by the presence of the banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) first detected in 2020 in Kigoma region. The disease is widespread in susceptible cultivars in eleven major banana-growing regions: Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Geita, Katavi, Kigoma, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Morogoro, Mwanza, and Pwani.