Western drywood termite, Incisitermes minor, is distributed southwestern USA and northern Mexico. Invasions had been reported to Canada, China, Hawaii and Japan. Incisitermes minor may be introduced through wooden structures. In California and Arizona, it caused economic damage of about $250 million. In September 2023, it was discovered in a house in Changwon-city, Korea and a joint investigation was conducted by APQA and other government agencies. The 16S rRNA sequence was used in the molecular epidemiological investigation to trace the origin of the invasion. Five individuals found in Changwon and 18 foreign sequences collected by NCBI were compared. A total of 462bp of base sequences were compared, and the genetic distance was observed to range from a minimum of 0.000 to a maximum of 0.1791. They were most genetically similar to the California individual in the United States.

Drywood termite (Cryptotermes domesticus), native to South East Asia, is distributed in India, China, Taiwan, Australia and so on. In China, it is considered an economically important pest causing damage to wood. It lives in dry wood environments such as furniture, buildings, and structural timber. It is difficult to find drywood termite within a structure but it can be detected by the presence of alate flight and small egg-like pellets of excreta. It was found in a house in Seoul, Korea in July 2023 and was investigated joint by APQA, National Institute of Ecology, National Institute Biological Resources, National Institute of Forest Science, Cultural Heritage Administration and Gyeongsang National University. The COII barcode region was analized with PCR method and compared with the sequences of all C. domesticus registered in NCBI 557bp of base sequence. Genetic difference ranged from a minimum of 0.0072 to a maximum of 0.0557. Among these, the individual with the minimum genetic distance was from Guangdong Province, China.

Solenopsis invicta, known as the red imported fire ant, is an insect native to South America. This species was unintentionally introduced into Australia, New Zealand, several Asian countries, Caribbean countries, and the United States. It shows a high survival rate and settlement potential in human-habitable and non-living areas such as tropical rainforests, disturbed areas, deserts, grasslands, and roads. In Korea, invasions of red fire ants have been reported every year since 2017, and two invasions were discovered in 2023. Quarantine agency analyzing the haplotype and colony social type of S. invicta for surveillance and control. Population genetic analysis using Microsatellite Alleleic data of 66 loci to trace the origin of the invasion. Through research cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), we have received samples and expanded our genetic information database. This study analyzed genetic differences between 15 invasive populations and 44 reference groups. As a result of microsatellite analysis, the domestic invasive population showed a genetic structure similar to those in Guangzhou, China, and Florida, USA.

Monochamus alternatus which is major vector for Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is main pest for pine trees. Moreover, their larvae mainly feed on the phloem of the host during the growth period, and this process makes host debilitate. The reason why the epidemiological investigation of that damage caused by Monochamus alternatus is difficult is that the adult and the larva remains very rarely in the host. Even if the larvae remain in the host, it is not easy to distinguish them from other cerambycidae coleopterans without expertise. For the above reason, we introduce the method of field epidemiological investigation for Monochamus alternatus using the remaining larva frass in the host with Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA) method.

Salmonellosis is one of the life-threating diseases of goat in Bangladesh. Therefore, the present study was designed to study the prevalence of Salmonellosis, and isolation and characterizations of the Salmonella spp. from apparently healthy and diarrheic goat. A total of 47 faces samples were collected from selected place and cultured onto different prescribed medium to isolate it. In this study, 12.76% (6/47) samples were found to be positive for Salmonella spp. During culture on SS agar medium, all of the Salmonella isolates produced round, smooth, opaque, translucent and black color colonies on SS agar media. All of the isolated Salmonella spp. fermented dextrose, maltose and mannitol with production of acid and gas but did not ferment sucrose and lactose. However, these isolates had showed Indole and Voges-Proskauer test negative, Methyl-Red test positive. All of these isolates were subjected to rapid plate agglutination test with polyvalent “O” (Poly ‘O’) and polyvalent “H” (poly ‘H’) antisera where positive agglutination were observed. They were highly sensitive to ciprofloxacin, spiramycin and gentamycin; moderately sensitive to oxytetracyline, streptomycin and amoxicillin; less sensitive to sulphamethoxazole and resistant to penicillin-G. Based on the present findings, it may be concluded that the investigated Salmonella spp. from goats might be S. typhimurium, S. enteritidis, S. brandenburg, S. salford, S. newbrunswick, S. newport or S. dublin. Further study will be needed, therefore it requires further characterization using other serological and molecular techniques.

Recently pathogenic E. coli is one of the main foodborne pathogens resulting in many patients in Korea. To understand the characteristics of pathogenic E. coli outbreaks in Korea, the epidemiological investigation reports of pathogenic E. coli outbreak in 2009 (41 reports) and in 2010 (27 reports) were collected in the web site of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reviewed and analysed in this study. The main places of the pathogenic E. coli outbreaks were food catering service area (64.8%) and restaurants (25.0%). The main type of the pathogens were EPEC (44.7%) and ETEC (34.2%). EAEC and EHEC was responsible for 10.5 and 9.2%, respectively. Eight of 68 outbreak cases were caused by more than 2 types of pathogenic E. coli which implicates the complicated contamination pathways of pathogenic E. coli. The incidence rate of pathogenic E. coli was 33.6 ± 30.5% and the main symptoms were diarrhea, stomach ache, nausea, vomiting, and fever etc. The two identified food sources were identified as frozen hamburger pattie and squid-vegetable mixture. To improve the food source identification by epidemiological investigation, food poisoning notification to the agency should not be delayed, whole food items attributed the outbreak should be collected and detection method of the various pathogenic E. coli in food has to be improved. In conclusion, the characteristics between the EHEC outbreaks in the western countries and the EPEC or ETEC outbreaks in Korea needs to be distinguished to prepare food safety management plan. In addition, the development of the trace back system to find the contamination pathway with the improved detection method in food and systemic and cooperative support by the related agencies are necessary.