The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has recently received two newly-fitted mobile field laboratories to improve its ability to manage the diagnostic work required in the event of fruit fly detection.
The new labs are designed to be picked up and transported to the field by truck and can be 'plugged in' to MPI's field HQ's power and water systems. This means that their laboratory function can be up and running within a day of a response starting.
In a fruit fly investigation, several laboratory tasks take place -- the examination of any insects trapped in the high-risk area, the slicing of fruit collected from the area to look for fruit fly eggs or larvae; and the incubation of any fallen fruit that may contain eggs or larvae so any hatching insects could be identified.
There is a large amount of potential risk material examined from a fruit fly surveillance zone during an investigation and it is not appropriate to move this material out of the zone for laboratory examination. The mobile laboratory capability allows diagnostic activities to be moved into the surveillance zone to maintain quarantine requirements.
The mobile laboratories now allow the Ministry to have better examination and inspection facilities, improved containment, greater flexibility at the site headquarters and cheaper establishment costs. This reduces deployment time which means field samples can now begin to be given laboratory examination earlier in the response.
