Mr Michael Edwards1,2, Dr Mark Blacket2, Dr Paul Cunningham1,2, Dr Brendan Rodoni1,2, Dr Francesco Martoni2

1La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, 2Agriculture Victoria Research, Melbourne, Australia

Biography:

Michael Edwards is a La Trobe University PhD student investigating Australian Psylloidea and their associated bacterial communities around citrus orchards as part of a project with Agriculture Victoria Research (AVR) and Citrus Australia Ltd.

Michael’s interest in biosecurity and entomology comes from years of field observations and biosecurity commitments when Michael was co-managing a lemon orchard as part of his family business. It was through many laborious hours of harvesting that Michael’s curiosity about the world of invertebrates began to grow. Michael is a passionate advocate of sustainability, agriculture, and environmental preservation. Michael would like to see sustainable agriculture continue and improve under changing global conditions.

Abstract:

Australia is a global hotspot of psyllid biodiversity, with hundreds of species still undescribed, making psyllid identification challenging and which could impact early detection of exotic psyllid pests. This is a major concern for the Australian citrus industry, especially regarding the early detection and surveillance of the exotic African citrus psyllid (Trioza erytreae) and Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri). These psyllids can transmit plant pathogenic Liberibacter species causing Huanglongbing disease, which has resulted in billions of dollars in losses worldwide.

This project aims to explore the biodiversity of psyllids, and their associated microbiome around citrus orchards, gaining a better understanding of Australian native diversity so that potential incursions of exotic species can be easier to identify. We collected psyllids across three states and four major citrus growing regions of the east coast of Australia and adopted an integrative taxonomical approach for their identification. This approach combined traditional morphological diagnostics and molecular techniques (including insect DNA barcoding and bacterial metabarcoding) to examine psyllids and their associated bacteria. The results presented here include samples from over 400 psyllid populations with sequencing representatives from over 60 species.

Ultimately, we identified some taxa present across most citrus growing regions and compared their bacterial communities with that of exotic psyllid pests. The data generated here contributes to updating DNA records of the Australian Psylloidea, enabling future researchers and biosecurity diagnosticians to streamline their identification processes, and it also links each species to a microbiome community profile, to investigate which native species show more similarities with exotic pests.