The Bellstedt Group focuses on:
- Investigations into the evolution of viruses and bacterial pathogens of potatoes and fruit trees and their detection.
- Plant molecular systematic and evolutionary studies of plant groups that occur in southern Africa focusing on the Cape Floral Region.
- The development of DNA vaccines against ostrich mycoplasmas.
- Fish Phylogenetics.
The Botes Group focuses on ostrich pathogens and vaccine development in the context of Immunology, ELISA, diagnostic PCR, establishing immunization schedules, DNA-vaccines, molecular biology, new generation sequencing techniques, prokaryote genome sequencing and annotation, DNA- and protein sequence bioinformatics.