PEPEIRA is an EU project aimed at developing an EU-wide Pest Risk Assessment (PRA) for Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV). The proposal is the investigation of the epidemiology and economic impact of PepMV on tomato crops growing in EU Member States with different climatic and market conditions.

The project also addresses the increased risk posed by new, biologically and genetically distinct strains of PepMV that have appeared in Europe recently and have the potential to be far more damaging. The project will develop and validate diagnostic protocols, to be published via EPPO. Our laboratory participate in determination the risk of seed transmission in the spread of PepMV within EU and in the ring test including serological and molecular methods.