Customs officers sample the plant seedlings on the site.

Recently, Shanghai Customs quarantined a batch of plant seedlings from the Netherlands and finally intercepted 3 kinds of quarantine pests as well as 9 kinds of ordinary pests; therein, the quantity of the quarantine pests hit the record high of one-off detection at Shanghai Pudong Airport since 1999.

The seedlings were from 5 kinds of plant seed-balls including astilbe, dahlia and oxalis, 45 varieties in total. The Customs sampled the 45 varieties respectively for examination in lab. Consequently, the quarantine pest of “Ditylenchus destructor, Thorne” was detected in 3 varieties of astilbe, “Tomato spotted wilt virus, TSWV” was detected in 2 varieties of dahlia, and “Tomato black ring virus, TBRV” detected in 1 variety of oxalis; additionally, 9 kinds of ordinary pests were also detected, including beet ring spot virus and various nematodes.

Afterwards, Shanghai Customs will destroy all of the infected seed-balls by the law and intensify the later quarantine over the seedlings.