Acknowledgement

This research on African boxthorn has been part of the projects ‘Biocontrol solutions for sustainable management of weed impacts to agricultural profitability’ (2016-2020) and ‘Underpinning agricultural productivity and biosecurity by weed biological control‘ (2019-2022), led by AgriFutures Australia (the trading name of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC)). These projects have been supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as part of its Rural R&D for Profit programme. Biosecurity South Australia (Primary Industries and Regions South Australia), the Shire of Ravensthorpe, Western Australia, and the New South Wales Government through its Environmental Trust are also acknowledged for their financial support.

Contributors to this project to date are:

CSIRO: Kylie Ireland (former employee), Gavin Hunter, Louise Morin, Michelle Rafter, Raghu Sathyamurthy, Kumaran Nagalingam, Darren Kriticos, Noboru Ota, John Lester, Patrick Gleeson, Gio Fichera, Andrew White, Tim Vance, Caroline Delaisse, Isabel Zeil-Rolfe, Peter Jones, Ben Gooden.

University of Queensland: Graham McCulloch, Komal Gurdasani, James Hereward, Gimme Walter.

Overseas collaborators: Grant Martin, Iain Paterson, Lenin Chari, Evans Mauda, Alan Wood.

Thanks to our Australian collaborators who kindly made collections of the weed for the genetic characterisation study. Thanks to John Heap, Laurence Haegi and Jane Prider (Biosecurity SA) for collecting seed/plants of non-target plant species for host-specificity tests and to Tom North, Curator of the National Seed Bank at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, and Graeme Errington, Seedbank Curator of the Australian PlantBank at the Australian Botanic Gardens Mt. Annan, who supplied seed of some of the Australian native plant species that will be used in host-specificity testing.

Many thanks also to the many community groups, private landholders, and other participants for assisting CSIRO in delivering the pilot release program of the rust fungus across Australia. The data have been instrumental in optimising methods for future releases.