About us
SLU Risk assessment of plant pests perform independent analyses which will provide support to the Swedish Board of Agriculture in their efforts to counteract the damage of new organisms.
Activities include pest risk assessments (PRA) of specific plant pests according to international standards as well as compilation of information and expert advice. Our focus is on pests that would cause unacceptably high damage and whose introduction to Sweden may be prevented by phytosanitary measures.
Analysts
SLU Risk assessment of plant pests is placed under the NJ faculty at SLU and the activities are led by a steering committee with members from SLU, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and the Swedish Forest Agency. Operationally, two analysts work full time in the unit.
Niklas Björklund
Niklas has the main responsibility for the risk assessment of macro-organisms (insects in particular). He has worked full time as a risk analyst since 2017 and has a background as an associate professor in forest entomology.
Read more about Niklas Björklund
Johanna Boberg
Johanna has the main responsibility for the risk assessment of microorganisms. She has worked full time as a risk analyst since 2017 and has a background as a forest pathologist and has, among other things, worked with invasive species of fungal pathogens.
Read more about Johanna Boberg.
We improve the state of knowledge
In addition to risk assessment of specific pests the unit will also perform risk classifications and develop approaches to estimate the different values of plants and plant environments. The risk assessment includes pests in agriculture, forestry, horticulture, and natural areas but is limited to pests included in phytosanitary legislation and those who potentially could become regulated.
In Sweden, there are similar functions for risk assessment of infectious animal diseases (SVA, the National Veterinary Institute) and food (Livsmedelsverket, the Swedish Food Agency). The need to be able to make risk assessments of plant pests has increased due to that the risks of new plant pests establishing themselves in Sweden increase with increasing global trade and a changing climate.
Nationell and international collaborations
The risk assessments are made both at national level and in cooperation with international actors, sometimes with other Nordic countries, sometimes at EU level (EFSA) or together with the plant protection organization EPPO. Find international risk assessments on the page Assignments and publications.
We often acquire knowledge from both national and international expertise in various fields to carry out the unit's assignments. The experts are usually researchers from various universities, but experts from other authorities, companies and private individuals are also sometimes consluted.
The unit also interacts with SLU Forest Damage Centre. Especially with the analysts there who work with native and already established plant pests.
Steering committee
- Riccardo Bommarco, Professor at the Department of Ecology, SLU, chairman
- Kristof Capieau, Chief Plant Health Officer, The Swedish Board of Agriculture
- Adrian Vallin, Plant Health Administrative Officer, The Swedish Board of Agriculture
- Patrik Karlsson, Forest Damage Coordinator, The Swedish Forest Agency
- Anna Berlin, Researcher at the Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, SLU
- Johan Stenberg, Professor at the Department of Plant Protection Biology, SLU
- Audrius Menkis, Researcher at the Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, SLU
- Kristine Koch, Research Officer at the Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, faculty office (administrative support)
