Introduction
Important practical issues face those organisations responsible for developing DITs for biosecurity agencies. This includes – deciding which biosecurity issues would most benefit from a DIT; what expertise will be required; and how it will be funded? To explore these and other issues, we first examine two biosecurity agencies, both of which have considerable experience in this area: the Identification Technology Program in the USA [3.1], followed by the Q-bank invasive plants/EPPO-Q-bank project in Europe [3.2]. We then focus on the role that international collaboration can play by examining two case studies that illustrate how sharing tools and data can contribute to the number of DITs for two different, but important pest categories: weed seeds [3.3] and thrips [3.4].
