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PA Bulletin, Doc. No. 07-2062

NOTICES

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Order of Quarantine; Revocation of Plum Pox Virus Quarantine in the Borough of Mount Holly Springs, Cumberland County

[37 Pa.B. 6031]
[Saturday, November 10, 2007]

Recitals

   A.  The Plant Pest Act (act) (3 P. S. §§ 258.1--258.27) empowers the Department of Agriculture (Department) to take various measures to detect, contain and eradicate plant pests in this Commonwealth.

   B.  The powers granted to the Department under section 21 of the act (3 P. S. § 258.21) include the power to establish quarantines to prevent the dissemination of plant pests within this Commonwealth.

   C.  Plum Pox Virus (PPV) is a serious plant pest, indigenous to Europe, that injures and damages stone fruits such as peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots by drastically reducing the fruit yields from these stone fruit trees and by disfiguring the fruit to the point that it is unmarketable.

   D.  As a result of the presence of PPV in several townships and boroughs, the Department has issued a series of quarantine orders establishing and adjusting a quarantine area.

   E.  PPV has the potential to cause serious damage to the stone fruit production industry within this Commonwealth.

   F.  PPV is transmitted from infected trees by aphids and by budding or grafting and can be spread into new areas by movement of infected nursery stock.

   G.  The movement of PPV-infected fruit trees poses a danger to stone fruit trees in noninfected areas.

   H.  There is no known control for PPV other than destruction of infected trees.

   I.  The Department conducts extensive testing of stone fruit trees in all of the quarantined areas to search for the presence of PPV. Where this testing has gone on for at least 3 years in a particular quarantined area without detecting the presence of PPV among stone fruit trees in that area, the Department is satisfied it is appropriate to rescind the PPV-related quarantine of that area.

Order

   Under authority of section 21 of the act the Department hereby orders the following:

   1.  The Order of Quarantine dated October 31, 2000 (published at 30 Pa.B. 5852 (November 11, 2000)), imposing a quarantine on the Borough of Mt. Holly Springs, in Cumberland County, is hereby rescinded.

   2.  This Order is issued in response to the fact that 3-consecutive years of intensive sampling and testing stone fruit leaves in the Borough of Mt. Holly Springs, Cumberland County, have not yielded any additional positive detections of PPV. The Borough of Mt. Holly Springs is no longer considered a potential reservoir of the PPV virus, and is considered free of PPV.

   3.  The Department will continue to consult with the United States Department of Agriculture, European experts and scientific authorities with respect to the most efficacious measures by which to contain and eliminate PPV, and may, if warranted, reconsider the need for quarantine restrictions.

   4.  This Order is effective as of October 24, 2007.

DENNIS C WOLFF,   
Secretary

[Pa.B. Doc. No. 07-2062. Filed for public inspection November 9, 2007, 9:00 a.m.]


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