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CenGen

A podcast on our UK-South African teaching collaboration

Lucentlands, a local agricultural media production company, recently invited Dr Renée Prins along with Prof Diane Saunders and Dr Burkhard Steuernagel, both from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, to chat about the series of Wheat Genomics and Bioinformatics workshops that were hosted in Worcester since 2017. Have a listen to …

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Benny jets off to the States for a robotics masterclass

Being flexible and generating data in a fast and effective way has always been something that we pride ourselves on at CenGen. Our high-throughput SNPlineTM robotics instruments from LGC Biosearch Technologies are pivotal in this feat, allowing us to generate thousands of data points within a single day. As with all …

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A second Agricultural Sciences Teachers’ workshop

On 13 July 2023 we, with funding kindly provided by DIPLOMICS, hosted a second workshop in the geneTeachers V series for nine Agricultural Sciences teachers from the Western Cape. The province’s subject advisor, Mr. John Christoffels, also attended. Read more about this event on our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7085496585383550979/

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World Food Safety Day – we play our part!

We’ve always been very cognisant of the concern around global food security and how plant genetics plays an imperative role in combating it. Our well-established relationship with South African wheat breeders enables us to contribute to local crop security. Thank you to DIPLOMICS for referencing the work that we enjoy …

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A celebratory reflection on two decades of CenGen excellence

The end of May marks a special occasion at CenGen as we commemorate our 20th anniversary! Back in 2003, our director, Renée Prins, established the company as a consultancy firm. However, recognizing a larger demand, she astutely steered CenGen towards becoming a genetics service provider for the agricultural sector. Over …

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Reaching further

The months of April and May saw many visitors coming through our doors. We hosted two workshops for teachers – geneTeachers V for Agricultural Sciences teachers from the Western Cape, and geneTeachers 6 for Life Sciences teachers from the Eden and Central Karoo education district. In total, 27 teachers represented 25 schools …

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An MSc for Michaela!

We’d like to celebrate with our colleague, Michaela-Anne White, on obtaining her MSc Agric degree (supervisor Mr Willem Botes) at the March graduation ceremony of Stellenbosch University! Michaela joined our team in February and is focusing on the wheat research projects as well as our social impact initiatives. Congratulations, Michaela!

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Doing it right from the roots up

Our longstanding collaboration with Provar has yielded many valuable data points. Today, Tristan Dorfling and Tashreeq Oliver arrived, soaking wet, at our door after collecting leaves from apple rootstocks during an unexpected cloud burst. Pictured above, they are sorting their equally wet samples and preparing them for DNA extraction. These …

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A fourth UK-SA bioinformatics workshop

From 20-24 February, several of our team members put their coding hats back on and attended the last of the series of Wheat Genomics and Bioinformatics workshops hosted at the Stellenbosch University Ukwanda campus in Worcester. The fourth workshop, presented by Drs Diane Saunders, Hugh Woolfenden and Burkhard Steuernagel from the John Innes Centre (JIC) …

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We continue to grow!

We are excited to welcome two new team members at CenGen this month! Michaela-Anne White (pictured left) is currently finishing up a Masters’ degree in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Stellenbosch University, where she focused on disease resistance and developing new methods for greenhouse screening of pathogens. At CenGen she …

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