Earlier this week, the government announced updates to its plant biosecurity strategy intended to safeguard the future of the UK's trees and plants against the threat of diseases like ash dieback.

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Defra ministers organised a 'Plant Health Stakeholder Summit' to gain advice from experts and draft the strategy, which ministers claim will help develop a coordinated approach across the country for dealing with pests and diseases. Representatives from government, woodland groups, academia and industry have all contributed to the draft strategy.

Together, expert advisors have developed a risk register, which was published on Monday. The register highlights 700 possible threats to Britain's trees and plants.

Speaking at the time of the launch, Environment Minister Lord de Mauley, said, "Safeguarding the future of our trees and plants is enormously important – on more than one occasion we have seen the dreadful trail of destruction such diseases can leave behind. And it's not just the environment that suffers, but the economy too.

"It is vital for us to work with those outside of government to get this plant health strategy right and successfully protect our environment from biosecurity threats. The register is an essential step forwards in helping us to identify all potential threats and plan against them."

Defra also announced that it has created a new Chief Plant Health Officer post. The Officer will lead on the risk register and contingency planning.

Richard McIntosh, the Assistant Chief Plant Health Officer, said, "Getting a wide range of input at this stage of the plant biosecurity strategy is invaluable, it is very important that we get this strategy right for everyone working with trees and plants. We will be looking at increasing our activity on surveillance and research over the next few years in order to ensure we protect our trees and plants as much as possible and are ready to deal with any threats to them."

The register aims to identify threats to plants and trees, then help by providing advice to a range of groups, including nurseries and woodland managers, to enable them to consider and manage risk effectively.

The risk register was recommended in the Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Taskforce Report published in May last year, in the wake of Chalara ash dieback, which arrived in the UK in 2012.

The plant biosecurity strategy will now be developed drawing on the thoughts of the attendees of the summit and other stakeholder engagement and is due to be published later in the Spring.

A Defra spokesperson said the department is allocating £8m for research into diseases that could affect the UK's trees, has overseen the planting of 250,000 ash saplings to monitor for genetic resistance to Chalara and has commissioned research to investigate genetic resistance in a laboratory setting