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Looking back on 2018 – highlights at the Institute for Plant Biotechnology
Author: C van der Vyver
Published: 06/02/2019

The year 2018 at the Institute for Plant Biotechnology (IPB) at Stellenbosch University was another busy and productive year. One of the core functions of the IPB is to train students. In this regard, research work completed during 2018 resulted in the awarding of one doctorate and four master's degrees at the IPB. During the March graduation ceremony, Marnus Smith received his doctorate degree, while in December, Coenrad van Beek, Melt Hugo, Janto Pieters and Ingrid Jacobs received their master's degrees at the graduation ceremony of the Faculty of Science – Melt Hugo with distinction. An additional 15 BSc Honours students also successfully graduated. We would like to congratulate all these students on a job well done!

A number of IPB staff and students also travelled across the country to participate in various science conferences to present research and meet collaborators. These included Dr Paul Hills, as President of the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB), representing students and staff at the 44th annual SAAB conference in January at the University of Pretoria. In July, James Lloyd, promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 (congratulations!), attended the Plant Biology Europe conference in Copenhagen and combined it with a meeting of the chief editors of the open-access Frontiers in Plant Science journal, held in Switzerland. 

As part of an ongoing South Africa-India science and technology research collaboration grant, Dr Christell van der Vyver visited the research group of Prof Sanjib Panda of the Department of Life Science and Bioinformatics, Assam University, in Silchar, India. Dr Van der Vyver travelled to India at the end of March to attend the National Conference on BioScience and Biotechnology and to present research from her group as an invited speaker at the conference. Prof Panda in turn visited South Africa at the end of May to assist with postgraduate research projects related specifically to drought tolerance in sugarcane and to exchange ideas in the general field of crop improvement during abiotic stress.

Dr Bianke Loedolff, a postdoctoral research fellow from the IPB, visited the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium) for two months. To enable her travels, she was awarded a Coimbra Group Scholarship, which led to a new collaboration between the IPB and Prof Wim Van Den Ende, Institute of Botany and Microbiology, an internationally recognised name in the field of fructan research. As part of the first Postdoctoral Conference of Southern Africa, Dr Loedolff also arranged and hosted a workshop on climate-smart agriculture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= I8UDRn2t61c&t=688s), which brought two former L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science awardees (Profs Jennifer Thomson and Jill Farrant) as speakers and saw the Dean of AgriSciences, Prof Danie Brink, deliver a keynote address on the topic. For all her hard work in 2018, Dr Loedolff also received an exceptional achievement award from the Vice-Rector: Research, Prof Eugene Cloete. Bianke, we congratulate you on a very productive and successful 2018!

New funding sources were secured by Dr Paul Hills for a project on the conservation of Haemanthus pumilio, sponsored by the Rupert Natuurstigting, which commenced in January 2018. Dr Christell van der Vyver was also successful in renewing an initial three-year contract for the genetic engineering of sugarcane for drought tolerance to March 2021. This is a project sponsored by the South African Sugar Research Institute (SASRI), mandated by the sugar industry to alleviate the impact of recent droughts on sustainable sugarcane production. In addition, Dr Shaun Peters was awarded funding on the National Research Foundation competitive support funding instrument for his recently launched pigeon pea (an important orphan crop) research programme.   

Furthermore, Dr Peters hosted an undergraduate student, Mr Wesly Curruchich, as part of an internship programme run by the EARTH University, Costa Rica. This was the first time that the IPB participated in this internship programme, and Wesly was in the IPB lab for 16 weeks conducting his research project on identifying the genes involved in the accumulation of antinutritional sugars in pigeon pea. Moreover, one of Dr Peters' PhD students, Ms Zanele Mthembu, was selected to participate in the ASPB Conviron Scholars Program (https://blog.aspb.org/announcing-the-2018-2019-aspb-scholars-sponsored-by-conviron/), which intends to build a foundation for young scientists to pursue careers in plant science. Zanele was the only South African selected for the programme, and we congratulate her on this achievement.

In 2018, Dr Paul Hills was also actively involved in a community outreach project to the Kruger National Park with the Ajubatus Foundation to discuss and organise projects around an underprivileged school in the area, and research projects that the IPB can become involved in, in collaboration with Ajubatus. Students and staff of the IPB, under leadership of Dr Hills and Dr Peters, also established new community gardens at Welgevallen Experimental Farm, Stellenbosch University. Fresh produce from these gardens have been delivered already on three occasions to the organisation Feeding in Action (https://feedinginaction.co.za).  

Overall, 2018 was a productive year at the IPB and we congratulate and thank all staff and students for their hard work during the course of the year.

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