What can we learn from New Zealand's experience with potato mop-top virus?
Spread by a soil-borne fungus vector that can cling to machinery and other materials, it's so far unclear how the disease made it onto a farm in north-west Tasmania.
An incident management team has been created to trace and contain the virus, amid concerns for the state's $300 million potato industry.
Seven years ago, one of Australia's closest neighbours was dealing with a detection of the same virus.
So what can Tasmania learn from the experience across the ditch?
Potato mop-top virus was first recorded in a single potato tuber taken from the storage facility of a processing factory in Canterbury, New Zealand in September 2018.
Before then, the disease had never been seen in New Zealand.
In Tasmania, the virus has only been detected on one farm and risk mitigation measures have been put in place to try and contain it.
But in New Zealand, it wasn't clear exactly which paddock the diseased tuber had come from, so a range of sites were tested and it soon became clear the virus was in several paddocks in Canterbury.
Iain Kirkwood, an agronomist and biosecurity manager from industry group Potatoes New Zealand, said an international committee of experts was set up to look at response options in New Zealand.
"They very quickly came to the conclusion that we cannot eradicate it, because it's a soil-borne organism which causes a powdery scab, and that can stay in the soil for years and years," Dr Kirkwood said.
According to the advisory group, eradication had not been achieved in many other international regions where the virus had been recorded either.
The New Zealand response moved from "eradication" to "management".
Dr Kirkwood said an entire department of the Ministry for Primary Industries looks at tracking and tracing how various incursions get into the country, but, despite a lot of time and money, it couldn't determine how potato mop-top virus arrived in New Zealand.
Potato mop-top virus is also found in the United States.
Professor Alexander Karasev from the University of Idaho said it might be difficult to trace how the virus entered Tasmania.
"In the US, we suspect that the main route of transmission of the virus is with soil … that might be potted for ornamental [plants] which may not even be related to potatoes," Professor Karasev said.
Potato mop-top virus can cause significant yield and quality reductions in potatoes.
Dr Kirkwood said there hadn't been any reports of yield impacts in New Zealand.
He said the virus was discovered in one seed paddock, and that seed line had to be destroyed and the grower compensated.
But he said overall, there hadn't been a major impact on New Zealand's potato industry so far.
"We're monitoring it through the processors — they report to us if they see mop-top in their lines — and they're recording it every so often," Dr Kirkwood said.
"But it's not causing any significant economic impact either on the growers or the processors right now."
The international expert advisory group did give New Zealand a warning, though.
"We're hopefully monitoring it sufficiently and that it's not going to creep up upon and cause some major issues, but it's one that you do have to pay attention to."
Dr Kirkwood said the most important thing New Zealand did was an early survey, testing about 200 lines of potatoes, including seed potatoes, throughout the whole country, to get a good picture of where and how widespread the virus was.
"It's very difficult to carry out a response if you're not certain as to where the disease actually is, so I would encourage Tasmania to do some form of survey," he said.
Dr Kirkwood also said it would be important for Biosecurity Tasmania to work with the local industry.
"The local industry knows the industry better than anyone else — far better than Biosecurity Tasmania does — so I would encourage them to work closely with the growers and the grower organisations."
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