On the back of the sequencing of the South African wheat cultivar Kariega and the subsequent cloning of stripe rust resistance gene Yr27, Ms Shannon Derman, project lead at CenGen, is currently on a 10 week scientific visit at KAUST in Saudi Arabia. This incredible opportunity arose from our collaboration with Prof Simon Krattinger and… Continue Reading
Years of dedication, perseverance and careful scientific consideration has paid off: A disease resistance gene from a South African wheat cultivar has been cloned and CenGen is proud to announce our involvement with it. In collaboration with Prof Simon Krattinger’s group from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia (KAUST) and… Continue Reading
CenGen’s international collaboration with Prof Simon Krattinger’s team at KAUST University (Saudi Arabia) and Prof Willem Boshoff from The University of Free State has resulted in groundbreaking research. The publication will appear in Nature Genetics on 14 March 2022 at 16:00 (GMT) / 12:00 (EST). At that time the paper (DOI: 10.1038/s41588-022-01022-1) will be available… Continue Reading
We are very excited to announce that CenGen is expanding once again. Dr Helmien Barkhuizen-Roode will join our team in April 2022. Helmien graduated with a PhD in Wine Biotechnology from Stellenbosch University in 2019 and has since completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the South African Grape and Wine Research Institute (SAGWRI) at Stellenbosch University. Her experience… Continue Reading
CenGen is privileged to have collaborated with the well-known rust team of the University of Free State for many years. Without the expertise of a pathologist our rust screening would not be possible. Our longstanding collaborator, Prof Willem Boshoff (UFS) (and his predecessor, Prof Zak Pretorius), has years of experience that we can’t do without… Continue Reading
One reason why we love working in the agricultural industry is that we often get to work outside of the lab. We were recently contracted by Mr. Lionel Hugo from Kleinplasie (Hermon) to confirm the identity of his date palms. For this, we needed to sample hundreds of trees on his farm. In between the… Continue Reading
With funding generously supplied by AB InBev and SABBI, CenGen was fortunate to acquire a Magnetic Induction Cycler (Mic) real-time PCR instrument in the last quarter of 2021. Real-time PCR (qPCR) has often been in the news in the past two years since it is the most accurate method with which to test for COVID-infections.… Continue Reading
By Elsabet Wessels and Shannon Derman Dr Renée Prins was invited by Dr Diane Saunders and Prof Graham Moore from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, to be the keynote speaker at their “UK Women in Wheat Mentoring Workshop” in June this year. We have been privileged in the past to work with Diane… Continue Reading
Raising awareness about genetics applications in agriculture is very important to our team. Shortly after our first teachers’ workshop, Dr Shane Murray, research specialist at CenGen, was invited to give a guest lecture to 27 students enrolled for an Advanced Diploma in Biotechnology at CPUT. With the topic The use of Molecular Markers in Plant… Continue Reading
Over the past few years, we’ve had many requests from learners for job shadowing at our laboratory. We did however notice that it was only learners from the same schools who contacted us, and we realised that more awareness about genetics as a career choice, specifically in agriculture, had to be created. With the help… Continue Reading