Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Plant Sciences graduate contributes technique to manage stem rust

08 October 2020 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

Dr Cornel Bender received her PhD qualification at the virtual graduation ceremonies in October. The title of her thesis is: Stem rust resistance in South African wheat and triticale.

The rapid distribution of disease-causing organisms such as Ug99, a wheat stem-rust pathotype, pointed out just how vulnerable global cereal production is to disease outbreaks.

These cereals include wheat, barley, rye, oats, triticale, rice, maize, and millet and are one of the most important food sources for human consumption.

According to Dr Cornel Bender, the projected world population of 10 billion in 2057 requires a growth of more than 40% in cereal production. Wheat is grown on more hectares than any other cereal and is one of the most important sources of calories for humans. However, the growth rate of wheat yields has declined from the 1960s to the 1990s. Therefore, it is essential to increase global wheat production.

“With the regular appearance of more aggressive stem rust pathotypes in South Africa, there is a constant need to discover new sources of resistance, understand the genetic base of presently deployed sources in wheat, triticale and barley cultivars, and to manipulate the deployment of resistant sources through a more sustainable approach,” says Dr Bender.

Her PhD thesis, titled: Stem rust resistance in South African wheat and triticale, includes various fundamental aspects for the effective management of stem rust in South Africa.

Dr Bender is a Professional Officer in the Division of Plant Pathology in the Department of Plant Sciences, who received her PhD at the virtual graduation ceremonies in October.

Innovative and cost effective

Her promotors, Prof Zakkie Pretorius, Research Fellow, and Dr Willem Boshoff, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences, believe that she used an innovative approach to develop a cost-effective phenotyping method to select for more durable resistance types in a controlled greenhouse environment.

“In the past, results obtained from field trials used to assess adult plants for stem-rust resistance, were often influenced by abiotic factors, were seasonable in nature, expensive, and time consuming; therefore, the development of a dependable greenhouse screening system provides an important additional instrument for rust research,” says Dr Bender.

She adds that the greenhouse technique is used worldwide to screen for adult plant resistance and contribute to save time and money.

Broadening our knowledge

“Inheritance studies were undertaken to determine the genetic base of stem-rust resistance in selected South African wheat and triticale cultivars (developed from wheat/rye crosses) through seedling analysis as well as greenhouse and fieldwork,” she says.

Dr Bender believes the use and development of different resistance screening methods, the elucidation of host genetics, as well as the use of histological and microscopic methods to study early resistance responses, broaden our knowledge and understanding of stem-rust resistance in South African wheat and triticale cultivars.

Ultimately, rust researchers, grain producers, and also the general public – through access to their daily bread – will benefit from her study.

News Archive

Moeletsi Mbeki discusses South Africa’s political economy

2012-08-17

At the guest lecture was, from the left: Johann Rossouw, lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Mr. Moeletsi Mbeki, and Prof. Pieter Duvenage, Head of the Department of Philosophy.
Photo: Johan Roux
17 August 2012

South Africa’s ongoing problems do not have their origin in the apartheid dispensation but in the British colonial period. This is according to the well known businessman and political analyst, Mr Moeletsi Mbeki, who was speaking during a guest lecture at the University of the Free State.

Mr Mbeki said the high unemployment rate among Blacks arose from the destruction of the Black small farming class in the last third of the 19th century to provide cheap labour to the developing mining sector. He said the notorious Land Act of 1913 was not the root of Black people’s loss of land but merely the legal formalisation thereof. Mr Mbeki emphasised that as long as it was argued that South Africa’s problems arose during the apartheid dispensation, problems would remain unsolved.

Regarding South Africa’s future, Mr Mbeki argued that three issues in particular were important – South Africa’s industrialisation, which ground to a halt in the 1970s, should be revived; the large scale training of industrialists with special emphasis on mathematics, science and the broader education system; and post-nationalist politics, of which parties such as Zimbabwe’s MDC, Zambia’s MMF and Mauritius’s MMM were outstanding examples.

The guest lecture was presented by the Department of Philosophy. More than 200 people attended the lecture and participated enthusiastically in the question and answer session. Afterwards, Mr Mbeki said he was impressed with the high level of the questions asked by students, which he said gave him hope for South Africa’s future.

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept