Publications by authors named "Cunniffe N"

Pest categorisation of .

EFSA J

January 2025

Following the commodity risk assessment of and plants for planting from Türkiye, in which (Hemiptera: Diaspididae), the pistachio oyster scale or yellow pistachio scale, was identified as a pest of possible concern, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a pest categorisation for the territory of the European Union (EU). is reported as a polyphagous pest which, however, mainly affects plants of the genus Originating from Asia, it is widely distributed in pistachio producing countries of Central, South and West Asia. Within the EU, the pest has been reported from Cyprus and Greece.

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The European Commission requested the EFSA Panel on Plant Health to prepare and deliver risk assessments for commodities listed in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/2019 as 'High-risk plants, plant products and other objects'. This Scientific Opinion covers plant health risks posed by plants of hybrids of x imported from Ukraine, taking into account the available scientific information, including the technical information provided by Ukraine. All pests that may be associated with the hybrids of x were evaluated against specific criteria for their relevance for this opinion.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The European Commission tasked the EFSA Panel on Plant Health with assessing the risk of pests related to unrooted cuttings produced in Costa Rica, focusing on both regulated and non-regulated pests.
  • - A total of 22 regulated pest species were identified, including various viruses affecting plants, and were analyzed for potential entry risks and the effectiveness of Costa Rica's risk mitigation strategies.
  • - The evaluation concluded that while the risk of pest contamination varied among those studied, there is a high likelihood (95% certainty) that most unrooted cuttings would be free of the tomato spotted wilt virus, estimating that 9,927 to 10,000 out of 10,000 bags would not carry this pest. *
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Article Synopsis
  • The European Commission tasked the EFSA Panel on Plant Health to assess the plant health risks of high-risk commodities imported from the UK, as listed in EU regulation 2018/2019.
  • The risk assessment categorized the commodities into four groups, including graftwood, bare root plants, potted plants, and large specimen trees, and evaluated pests linked to these groups.
  • Two EU quarantine pests were identified for further evaluation based on their relevance, with the assessment considering factors like plant age and the effectiveness of risk mitigation measures from the UK.
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Plant viruses threaten food security and are often transmitted by insect vectors. Non-persistently transmitted (NPT) plant viruses are transmitted almost exclusively by aphids. Because virions attach to the aphid's stylet (mouthparts) and are acquired and inoculated via brief epidermal probes, the aphid-virus interaction is highly transient, with a very short aphid virus retention time.

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Plant diseases significantly impact food security and food safety. It was estimated that food production needs to increase by 50% to feed the projected 9.3 billion people by 2050.

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This scientometric study reviews the scientific literature and CABI distribution records published in 2022 to find evidence of major disease outbreaks and first reports of pathogens in new locations or on new hosts. This is the second time we have done this, and this study builds on our work documenting and analyzing reports from 2021. Pathogens with three or more articles identified in 2022 literature were , , species complexes, ' Liberibacter asiaticus', , formae specialis, and f.

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Increased imports of plants and timber through global trade networks provide frequent opportunities for the introduction of novel plant pathogens that can cross-over from commercial to natural environments, threatening native species and ecosystem functioning. Prevention or management of such outbreaks relies on a diversity of cross-sectoral stakeholders acting along the invasion pathway. Yet, guidelines are often only produced for a small number of stakeholders, missing opportunities to consider ways to control outbreaks in other parts of the pathway.

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Previous models of growers' decision-making during epidemics have unrealistically limited disease management choices to just two options. Here, we expand previous game-theoretic models of grower decision-making to include three control options: a crop that is tolerant, resistant or susceptible to disease. Using tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) as a case study, we investigate how growers can be incentivized to use different control options to achieve socially optimal outcomes.

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Multiple acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency (MADD) is a rare metabolic disorder which typically manifests with muscle weakness. However, despite late-onset MADD being treatable, it is often misdiagnosed, due in part to the heterogeneity of presentations. We report a case of late-onset MADD manifesting first as a sensory neuropathy before progressing to myopathic symptoms and acute metabolic decompensation.

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The Cambridge Centre for Myelin Repair One (CCMR-One) trial showed that 6 months of bexarotene reduces visual evoked potential (VEP) latency in people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). In a single-centre follow-up study of these participants, we re-examined full-field VEP and clinical assessments. Twenty participants (12 bexarotene and 8 placebo) were seen on average 27 months after their trial involvement.

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One of the most promising approaches to delay, prevent or reverse disability progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) is to enhance endogenous remyelination and limit axonal degeneration. In clinical trials of remyelinating drugs, there is a need for reliable, sensitive and clinically relevant outcome measures. The visual pathway, which is frequently affected by MS, provides a unique model system to evaluate remyelination of acute and chronic MS lesions in vivo and non-invasively.

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AbstractDisease control can induce both demographic and evolutionary responses in host-parasite systems. Foreseeing the outcome of control therefore requires knowledge of the eco-evolutionary feedback between control and system. Previous work has assumed that control strategies have a homogeneous effect on the parasite population.

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Increasing fungicide dose tends to lead to better short-term control of plant diseases. However, high doses select more rapidly for fungicide resistant strains, reducing long-term disease control. When resistance is qualitative and complete-i.

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We used a marker gene for paternity analysis to determine if virus infection affected male reproductive success of tomato in bumblebee-mediated cross-pollination under glasshouse conditions. We found that bumblebees that visited flowers of infected plants showed a strong preference to subsequently visit flowers of non-infected plants. The behavior of the bumblebees to move toward non-infected plants after pollinating virus-infected plants appears to explain the paternity data, which demonstrate a statistically significant ∼10-fold bias for fertilization of non-infected plants with pollen from infected parents.

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Plant pathogens respond to selection pressures exerted by disease management strategies. This can lead to fungicide resistance and/or the breakdown of disease-resistant cultivars, each of which significantly threaten food security. Both fungicide resistance and cultivar breakdown can be characterised as qualitative or quantitative.

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A synoptic review of plant disease epidemics and outbreaks was made using two complementary approaches. The first approach involved reviewing scientific literature published in 2021, in which quantitative data related to new plant disease epidemics or outbreaks were obtained via surveys or similar methodologies. The second approach involved retrieving new records added in 2021 to the CABI Distribution Database, which contains over a million global geographic records of organisms from over 50,000 species.

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Background: The prognostic significance of non-disabling relapses in people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) is unclear.

Objective: To determine whether early non-disabling relapses predict disability accumulation in RRMS.

Methods: We redefined mild relapses in MSBase as 'non-disabling', and moderate or severe relapses as 'disabling'.

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Infectious diseases of plants present an ongoing and increasing threat to international biosecurity, with wide-ranging implications. An important challenge in plant disease management is achieving early detection of invading pathogens, which requires effective surveillance through the implementation of appropriate monitoring programmes. However, when monitoring relies on visual inspection as a means of detection, surveillance is often hindered by a long incubation period (delay from infection to symptom onset) during which plants may be infectious but not displaying visible symptoms.

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Plant diseases caused by viruses share many common features with those caused by other pathogen taxa in terms of the host-pathogen interaction, but there are also distinctive features in epidemiology, most apparent where transmission is by vectors. Consequently, the host-virus-vector-environment interaction presents a continuing challenge in attempts to understand and predict the course of plant virus epidemics. Theoretical concepts, based on the underlying biology, can be expressed in mathematical models and tested through quantitative assessments of epidemics in the field; this remains a goal in understanding why plant virus epidemics occur and how they can be controlled.

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Population-scale effects of resistant or tolerant crop varieties have received little consideration from epidemiologists. When growers deploy tolerant crop, population-scale disease pressures are often unaffected. This only benefits growers using tolerant varieties, selfishly decreasing yields for others.

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Objective: In multiple sclerosis chronic demyelination is associated with axonal loss, and ultimately contributes to irreversible progressive disability. Enhancing remyelination may slow, or even reverse, disability. We recently trialled bexarotene versus placebo in 49 people with multiple sclerosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) affects tomato plants and is transmitted by aphids; the study examined how CMV influences aphid behavior through volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by infected plants.
  • The research found that generalist and specialist aphids displayed varying preferences for settling on CMV-infected versus mock-inoculated plants at different time points post-inoculation, indicating that aphids are influenced by the infection status of the plants.
  • Notably, the interaction changes between aphids and plants were linked to specific CMV proteins but did not involve the salicylic acid defense signal, which protects plants from CMV damage without affecting aphid behavior.
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Article Synopsis
  • The spread of plant disease is influenced by biological factors and human decisions made by growers, yet human behavior is often left out of plant epidemic models.
  • Research on Cassava Brown Streak Disease shows that perceived profitability affects growers' participation in clean seed systems (CSS), with decisions based on the expected economic benefits of disease management strategies.
  • Overestimating infection risk can decrease participation in CSS, and while effective strategies exist, diseases like CBSD are seldom fully eradicated, emphasizing the need for models that incorporate human behavior and decision-making.
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Remyelination is the regenerative process by which lost myelin sheaths are restored to demyelinated axons. It is a key target in the treatment of chronic demyelinating disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS), in which inflammation results in destruction of myelin. In the central nervous system (CNS), remyelination typically requires the differentiation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) into the myelinating oligodendrocytes (OL).

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