Acknowledgement

This research on flaxleaf fleabane 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. The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the NSW Biocontrol Taskforce are also acknowledged for their financial support.

Contributors to these projects to date are:

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

Overseas collaborators: Robert Barreto, Mauricio Alberto Salazar Yepes, Laura Carolina Álvarez Morales, Juan Gonzalo Morales-Osario, Carlos Velasquez, Sandra Uribe Soto, Liseth Suarez, Eduardo Adenesky Filho, Marcelo Diniz Vitorino, Rodrigo Diaz, Carlos Wiggins.

Thanks to our Australian collaborators who kindly made collections of the weed for the genetic characterisation study 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 for host-specificity testing.