Introduction

The deployment of sentinel gardens is emerging as an efficient approach to the risk assessment of exotic herbivores. A European Union team, led by INRA in Montpellier, France, has established a network of sentinel gardens in China a decade ago. These have produced more than 105 discoveries of potential pests new to Europe (reviewed in Kenis et al. 2018). The results led to the strengthening of relationships between the researchers and institutions in EU and China. In November 2019, the parties have signed an agreement to expand the collaboration and establish a formal intergovernmental laboratory.

While the Europe-China collaboration is ahead of any similar American effort, we will close the research gap, and also implement several innovations (namely the stressed-tree treatment, and the ability to source larger trees through connections to the nursery trade).

Pre-invasion screening of overseas pests is not a barrier to trade. To the contrary: knowing which pests are harmful and which are harmless facilitates international trade. It is because the approach demonstrates which offshore woodborers are low priority. The Chinese counterparts are also fully supportive of the project, as evidenced by co-authored publications (e.g., Gao et al., 2017).

In this study the aim was to develop a data collection, validation, and storage framework. We set about this with the following objectives:

• Establish and maintain sentinel gardens of American trees in several natural localities in China, spanning the tropical, subtropical and temperate regions that match the USA latitudinal range.
• Establish and maintain a reciprocal garden of Chinese trees in Florida.
• Over 4 years, trees will be monitored for damage by wood borers attracted to living, healthy, and stressed trees.
• For the high priority species, key risk factors are collected.
• Establish a data management framework with the aim of securely and easily capturing, storing and sharing data in real time.