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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Doing repairs to the beat of Elton John When Benny Leriba joined the team in September last year he didn’t expect to do work other than molecular genetics. But, given COVID and the resulting flight restrictions it became necessary for us to “mechanic” our robotic instruments from LGC Biosearch Technologies …
Genomic selection (GS) is a genetics tool that involves selecting individuals in a breeding population (plants or animals) according to their entire genetic potential for a trait, rather than because of the presence of a specific gene associated with that trait. Since the early 2010s, this tool has been applied …
CenGen was once again privileged to be the recipient of a training course from ThermoFisher Scientific, sponsored by DIPLOMICS. We have been part of the DIPLOMICS group of laboratories since 2018– a partnership which has proven to be truly beneficial. Apart from instrumentation, service contracts and training – all invaluable …
Knowledge and skills transfer is something we value greatly at CenGen. We have an internal drive to ensure that no skill, responsibility or process is mastered by only one staff member at the time in order to ensure sustainability and progress. Debbie Snyman, being the first staff member to be …
We would like to applaud Professor Willem Boshoff on recently earning the title of Associate Professor in Department Plant Sciences at the University of the Free State. Willem is a much valued, longstanding collaborator of CenGen. In his capacity as wheat breeder at Pannar Seed (Pty) Ltd he initially was …
For research scientists, a “quick fix” is basically a foreign concept. Research and development takes time, and often a project runs over multiple years before an answer (and a scientific publication) is reached. Therefore, when we get to put our applied science coats on it is very satisfying when we …
