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Plant breeding enhances crop improvement

15 September 2020 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

Dr van Biljon — Dr Angeline van Biljon was elected as a member of the Southern African Plant Breeders’ Association (SAPBA) executive committee.

Ever wondered how seedless fruit such as lemons, watermelons, and grapes came to be?

Dr Angeline van Biljon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS), was recently elected as a member of the Southern African Plant Breeders’ Association (SAPBA) executive committee where she will serve until March 2022.

She says it is a privilege to be a member of the team. “It is an opportunity to bring plant breeding to the community so that more people can know about the subject. For example, that seedless lemons, grapes, and watermelons does not just happen; that orange sweet potatoes with high beta-carotene are bred to combat vitamin A deficiency; and that wheat quality is important to make a good loaf of bread.”

This position also brings with it the possibility for her students to work closely with people in industry. “Other members of the committee are breeders in seed and breeding companies,” explains Dr Van Biljon.

Contributing on other platforms

She was nominated and elected for this position during the SAPBA conference that was held at the Future Africa campus in Pretoria. Besides serving on the executive committee of SAPBA, she is involved with and are serving on several other platforms where she is making a difference in the plant breeding industry.

Dr Van Biljon collaborates on wheat quality with researchers in the wheat industry at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Small Grain in Bethlehem. “I’m also a committee member of the Cereal Science and Technology – Southern African Association.”

For the past two years, she has been giving online lectures on biofortification as part of a National Research Foundation/Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT/NRF) group in Alnarp in Sweden. However, she states a working visit to the Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China as one of her biggest highlights.

Today, I want to help students see the difference plant breeding can make in crop improvement and food security.

The difference plant breeding can make

Although genetics was one of her passions as student, she later found herself as a flower breeder at the ARC Roodeplaat. Years later, she returned to the UFS to complete her PhD in Plant Breeding. And today, she wants to help students see the difference plant breeding can make in crop improvement and food security.

Currently, Dr Van Biljon is focusing on her research, which is the study of the nutritional value of various crops by determining, among others, the beta-carotene values of butternuts, the starch quality of wheat, and the tryptophan value of quality protein maize. “I also look at the influence of abiotic stress on the crop quality and nutritional value of various crops,” she adds.

News Archive

Famous mineralogists visit UFS Geology

2017-04-25

From the left: Prof Marian Tredoux, Associate
Professor at the UFS Department of Geology;
Prof Giorgio Garuti; from the University of Leoben,
Dr Federica Zaccarini, also from the
University of Leoben and Dr Freddie Roelofse,
Head of the Department of Geology at the UFS.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

Years of academic friendship and collaboration is what makes Prof Giorgio Garuti and Dr Federica Zaccarini return to the University of the Free State (UFS) every so often.

The world-renowned academic duo from the University of Leoben in Austria were guest lecturers at the UFS Department of Geology. “We are here because we have known Professor Marian Tredoux and the Geology Department, for a long time. We are really happy to be here, and to be given the opportunity to present talks,” said Dr Zaccarini. The two are experts in platinum-group element mineralogy and each has given their surname to minerals namely, the Garutiite and Zaccariniite minerals.

Visit great advantage for research
They are acclaimed experts on very small minerals (smaller than a hundredth of a millimetre) with emphasis on platinum group elements in chrome-rich rocks. “Their visit is a great advantage for us. We also conduct research on these minerals and can learn from them,” said Prof Marian Tredoux, affiliated researcher at the Department of Geology.

Dr Zaccarini gave a lecture on Chromitites, and associated platinum-group elements, in ophiolites on Wednesday 5 April 2017 and Dr Garuti presented a lecture on Uralian-Alaskan complexes: a puzzling source of platinum, on Thursday 6 April 2017. During the talks they examined the association of the platinum-group minerals with chromite, rather than sulphide, and how this association can lead to the formation of unusual platinum-group element ores.

Collaboration on various academic papers
They and Prof Tredoux have collaborated on various research articles over the past four years, which have been published in various important international scientific journals. “These journals play an important role in calculating the H-scale which measures how important a researcher’s work is on an international scale,” said Prof Tredoux.

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