A $9 million biosecurity technology project is geared to protect New Zealand’s food production sector at the flick of an app.
Agri-tech company Onside is delivering the new biosecurity technology that will arm biosecurity managers with a new app to protect the rural sector.
The technology is set to transform biosecurity practices and help the primary industries better prepare for and prevent biosecurity incursions, Onside chief executive Ryan Higgs said.
“As a country, we face the growing risk that an increasingly diverse set of pests and diseases will cross our borders and impact our all-important primary sector.
“Time matters in a biosecurity response and fast access to accurate traceability data is critical for preparing and responding efficiently to a biosecurity incursion,” Higgs said.
Onside’s mobile app for rural risk management has mapped more than 16,000 rural properties and logged over 2.6 million movements across NZ and Australia.
When contractors and visitors check in to rural properties, movement data, including plant material, people, machinery and equipment, is collected to make it easy to manage health and safety and biosecurity risks.
In the past six months, Onside’s new biosecurity tracing software, Onside Intelligence, has identified at least 1000 check-in movements that presented a heightened risk of spreading a biosecurity threat, Higgs said.
Onside’s technology uses data from various sources to create an intricate map of rural interactions and potential disease pathways to support biosecurity management activity, making it easier and faster to detect and respond to outbreaks of pests and diseases.
Higgs said the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) investment in the Onside technology has been instrumental in getting it into the hands of industry partners.
“With recent additional support from MPI, we’ve also set up a dedicated science group comprising some of the top minds in biosecurity to tackle the ever-evolving challenges presented by global biosecurity risks.”
Biosecurity NZ deputy director-general at the MPI, Stuart Anderson, said biosecurity is crucial for safeguarding the primary sector and economic security.
“It’s great to see the development of this tool and industry uptake growing for Onside.”
The Onside and MPI partnership was established in 2022 to fast-track the development and adoption of Onside’s biosecurity app through a $9m multi-year project co-invested in by the MPI Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures (SFFF) fund.
Early adopters of the Onside biosecurity technology include Biosecurity NZ, Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH), NZ Winegrowers, NZ Pork, Aquaculture NZ and NZ Avocado.
Adoption rates of Onside Intelligence in the kiwifruit and viticulture industry are growing beyond 30% as growers continue to understand the benefits of digital traceability to protect their industry and livelihoods.
In industries like salmon, adoption has grown rapidly to more than 80%.
One of the first industry partners to deploy Onside Intelligence was NZ Winegrowers, the country’s grape and wine sector organisation, which sought to test the system to improve traceability in the $2.3 billion viticulture sector.
NZ Winegrowers biosecurity manager Sophie Badland said from a production perspective, many grapes must be of the right quality for export quality wine.
“An incursion of a new pest or disease, like BMSB or Pierce’s disease, could affect both grape quality and quantity, posing a significant challenge for our growers.”
One means of unwanted organisms being transmitted between vineyards is through the extensive use of machinery and equipment.
“Having a traceability system like Onside Intelligence potentially saves primary industries and the government a lot of time and money in the event of a response,” Badland said.
“By having movement data readily accessible, we can get ahead of any new damaging pests and diseases, which gives us the best chance of eradication.”
KVH, a biosecurity organisation dedicated to protecting NZ kiwifruit growers from pest and disease threats, is another early adopter implementing Onside’s technology to help protect the $4bn kiwifruit sector from future incursions.
The kiwifruit industry faced its first big biosecurity challenge just over a decade ago when the bacterial canker Psa spread across orchards and growing regions in the North Island.
The Psa response cost the industry an estimated $1bn in production and profitability, with added social and psychological stresses.
KVH chief executive Leanne Stewart said, “This is an important project for KVH as we help ensure industry preparedness for biosecurity to protect orchards, businesses, and livelihoods.
“Onside is adding great value to growers by improving day-to-day best biosecurity practices in a simple, innovative way.”
The industry partners deploying Onside’s technology are part of the Government Industry Agreement for Biosecurity Readiness and Response, a formal partnership between the MPI and 23 industry organisations.
The SFFF partnership has also invested $100,000 in a dedicated science programme that aims to ensure Onside’s traceability platform remains world class and meets the ever-evolving challenges presented by global biosecurity risks.
This includes the development of specialised network algorithms that are aimed at providing insights on where incursions might show up and how to respond in the most impactful way.
Higgs said the project has leveraged some of the world’s leading scientists to support technology development that provides insights to improve the efficiency of readiness and response.
“The goal is to detect new incursions as early as possible and minimise impact and cost.”
The science programme is governed by an advisory committee that includes Dr Mary van Andel, chief veterinary officer at the MPI; leading network scientist Professor Santo Fortunato from Indiana University; Dr Hautahi Kingi, a data scientist at Google; and Higgs, who is a Fulbright scholar with a PhD in Animal Science from Cornell University.
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