A potato virus has been detected in north-west Tasmania, the first confirmed case in Australia.
Potato mop-top virus was found on a single property in the region after an industry member spotted a suspicious spud and alerted Biosecurity Tasmania.
Primary Industries Minister Gavin Pearce, himself a potato farmer from the north-west, announced the July 18 detection today.
Pearce said he was told about the detection yesterday afternoon and pushed for immediate action.
“We can’t leave this even until next week as far as I’m concerned, I wanted this dealt with straight away,” he said.
While the virus poses no risk to people, Pearce warned it poses a serious threat to potato production.
Biosecurity Tasmania’s chief plant scientist Susanna Driessen said the detection involved an exotic pathogen never before recorded in the country.
“This constitutes the first detection of mop-top virus in Australia,” she said. “It may not represent the site of introduction.”
“We’re quite early in the stage of this detection. What we’re doing at the moment is working with industry, working with the grower to understand where material might have moved and also how potentially material came onto the property.”
Minister Pearce said Tasmania is “renowned as the potato capital” and that he wants to keep it that way.
“Biosecurity is incredibly important to me, it’s incredibly important to this state,” Pearce said.
“It underpins our viability and it underpins many industries that work very hard to achieve the results that they have.”
Biosecurity Tasmania is now tracing where the virus may have come from and where it could have spread.
There are currently no interstate restrictions on Tasmanian potatoes being sent to the mainland.
