Accelerated development of quarantine treatments for insects on poor hosts

The probit 9 standard for quarantine treatment efficacy (99.9968% mortality ) was originally recommended for tropical fruits heavily infested with frui t flies and it centers on high mortality to achieve quarantine security, Th is standard may be too stringent for quarantine pests in commodities that a re rarely infested or are poor hosts. The alternative treatment efficacy ap proach measures risk as the probability of a mating pair, gravid female, or parthenogenic individual surviving in a shipment. This will be a function of many factors including infestation rate and shipment volume. Applying th e risk-based alternative treatment efficacy approach to pests on rarely inf ested or poor hosts will lower the number of required test insects needed f or developing quarantine treatments; hence data for a quarantine treatment could be generated by testing 10,000 or fewer insects with no survivors, co mpared with 90,000 -100,000 insects to demonstrate the traditional probit 9 efficacy. Several commodity/quarantine pest systems where this approach co uld be applied are discussed. This approach would save time and resources, and help farmers export their crop on a more-timely basis.