Contributions to improve current environmental risk assessment procedures of GABCAs in Argentina

LUNA, M. G.; SÁNCHEZ N.E.; CÉDOLA C. V.; ACHINELLY M. F.; SÁNCHEZ M.

Helsinki

Congreso; XXVI International Congress of Entomology 2020 (ICE 2020) - New date: 18-23 July 2021; 2020

CONGRESO POSPUESTO PARA JULIO 2021Argentina has over 100 years of experience in classical biological control, mostly based on the importation of GABCAs against arthropod pests and weeds. Historically, introductions were requested by provincial or national ministries of agriculture and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, INTA), and only a few, if any, risk or non-target effect analyses were made prior to entering the organisms. Since the late 1990s, the process for requesting, evaluating and making decisions to import, quarantine, release and post-release monitoring of exotic biocontrol agents is carried out by the the Animal and Plant Protection Service (Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Animal y Vegetal, SENASA) at national level. Safety of introductions is also regulated at international level, by the Plant Protection Committee (Comité de Sanidad Vegetal, COSAVE) formed by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay to accomplish the International Standard for Phytosanitary Measures (ISPM 3). As a part of the process, the evaluation of environmental risks and potential non-target organisms threatened of importing such exotic agents is requested to specialists from academic and scientific sectors. Experts usually face the lack of published information or previous research work done on the biology of the invasive pest, the native natural enemies communities, and at larger scale, the effects on non-target species; thus, they are mostly reluctant to inform positively on those petitions. Lastly, this situation creates tensions among scientists, producers and decision makers to import exotic GABCAs. In this paper, we present the state of the art of the procedures and regulations for the importation of GABCAs in Argentina during the last two decades, summarizing main classical or commercial biocontrol initiatives and discuss the potential risks involved in such introductions. To cope with that, we focused our analysis on the petition to import 18 GABCA species (15 parasitoids and three predators) done from 1996 to date, reported by SENASA and COSAVE websites. We summarized their host/prey range, biogeographical origin, target crop and pest, year of requested importation, experimental or commercial purposes, and denied or approved request (year) by searching information on the species in Google Scholar, CABI and other biological databases as well as that published in primary literature sources, non-peer review papers (technical reports, etc.). We also ranked the species following the ERA-GABCA categories for Likelihood of Establishment (LE) for the exotic agents and Adverse Effects (AEi) on non-target species. We are aimed to provide, from this study, indications and recommendations for scientific researchers, agricultural producers, practitioners and decision makers to improve the current evaluation for GABCA introductions, in a social, environmental and economic safer productive context.