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23 May 2022 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied
Prof Maryke Labuschagne
Prof Maryke Labuschagne was recently awarded a fully funded visiting senior research fellowship in the Spanish Centres of Excellence.
Africa, North America, and now also Europe. With research in plant breeding, Prof Maryke Labuschagne is working on at least three continents to make an impact, contributing to food security in Africa under changing climate conditions that are causing increasing occurrence of heat and drought stress. 

“We have to breed crops that are climate-change resilient, and which also have good nutritional value under the adverse production conditions experienced by small-scale farmers in Africa,” she states. 

Prof Labuschagne, Professor in Plant Breeding and holder of the SARChI Research Chair in Disease Resistance and Quality in Field Crops at the University of the Free State (UFS), was recently awarded a fully funded visiting senior research fellowship in the Spanish Centres of Excellence. From 1 June this year, she will spend six months in Cordoba, Spain, at theInstitute for Sustainable Agriculture, doing research on legume and wheat breeding for disease resistance and quality.

Promote the leadership of African women

The fellowship is part of the Science by Women programme, a UNESCO initiative that aims to promote the leadership of African women in science. As stated on the UNESCO website, the main goal of this programme is to enable African women scientists to tackle the great challenges faced by Africa through research on, among others, sustainable agriculture, food security, and climate change. The programme would also like to see African women playing a leading role in the transition of Africa to a knowledge-based and innovation-led economy through research that can be transferred to products, processes, services, and technologies that have an impact on people’s lives.

The research she will be conducting at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture is related to the SARChI Chair research that she has been leading over the past six years. With her work in the research chair, she is producing research on the breeding of cereal crops towards improved quality and nutritional value for processing and consumption. The chair is also involved in the training of PhD and MSc students from all over Africa and South Africa.

In Spain, she will be working on soybean and bean phenotyping, genotyping, and disease resistance screening, and will be physically involved in all aspects of the research. Prof Labuschagne states that she will, however, also be learning new skills and publishing research results with her host institution. 

As one of the selected research fellows, she will receive training in various aspects of leadership and research management. “We will also participate in a conference on Science Innovation in Africa that is scheduled to take place in Madrid in July,” says Prof Labuschagne. 

This is a wonderful opportunity to experience a different culture, and to do research with Spanish colleagues on aspects in plant breeding that are mutually important to Europe and Africa. – Prof Maryke Labuschagne 

Work on the African continent

During the six-month period, Prof Labuschagne will also be involved in a wheat quality project with the Department of Genetics at the University of Córdoba, with which she has been collaborating for many years. “In this project, we are looking at the influence of heat and drought stress conditions on bread and durum wheat gluten proteins, and how this influences end-product quality,” she says.

Besides her work in Europe, Prof Labuschagne has also done much work on the African continent over the years. “We are currently doing collaborative research with mainly the Consortium of International Agricultural Research centres (CGIAR) as well as the regional research centres, working on the genetic improvement of staple crops such as maize, sorghum, legumes, and cassava.”

“We also work with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Ethiopia on maize research, and with CIMMYT Mexico on wheat. Moreover, research is also being conducted in cooperation with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria on cassava and cowpea, and with IITA in Zambia on cassava. At the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, we are doing work on sorghum,” she says. 

Prof Labuschagne is also supervising PhD students from various countries working on different crops, including cowpea in Ghana, sorghum and maize in Ethiopia, cassava in Zambia, and maize in Zimbabwe and Kenya. 

 


News Archive

MBA Programme - Question And Answer Sheet - 27 May 2004
2004-05-27

1. WHAT MUST THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE (UFS) DO TO GET FULL ACCREDITATION FOR THE MBA PROGRAMMES?

According to the Council on Higher Education’s (CHE) evaluation, the three MBA programmes of the UFS clearly and significantly contribute to students’ knowledge and skills, are relevant for the workplace, are appropriately resourced and have an appropriate internal and external programme environment. These programmes are the MBA General, the MBA in Health Care Management and the MBA in Entrepreneurship.

What the Council on Higher Education did find, was a few technical and administrative issues that need to be addressed.

This is why the three MBA programmes of the UFS received conditional accreditation – which in itself is a major achievement for the UFS’s School of Management, which was only four years old at the time of the evaluation.

The following breakdown gives one a sense of the mostly administrative nature of the conditions that have to be met before full accreditation is granted by the CHE:

a. A formal forum of stakeholders: The UFS is required to establish a more structured, inclusive process of review of its MBA programmes. This is an administrative formality already in process.

b. A work allocation model: According to the CHE this is required to regulate the workload of the teaching staff, particularly as student numbers grow, rather than via standard management processes as currently done.

c. Contractual agreements with part-time staff: The UFS is required to enter into formal agreements with part-time and contractual staff as all agreements are currently done on an informal and claim-basis. This is an administrative formality already in process.

d. A formal curriculum committee: According to the CHE, the School of Management had realised the need for a structure – other than the current Faculty Board - where all MBA lecturers can deliberate on the MBA programmes, and serve as a channel for faculty input, consultation and decision-making.

e. A system of external moderators: This need was already identified by the UFS and the system is to be implemented as early as July 2004.

f. A compulsory research component: The UFS is required to introduce a research component which will include the development of research skills for the business environment. The UFS management identified this need and has approved such a component - it is to take effect from January 2005. This is an insufficient element lacking in virtually all MBA programmes in South Africa.

g. Support programmes for learners having problems with numeracy: The UFS identified this as a need for academic support among some learners and has already developed such a programme which will be implemented from January 2005.

The majority of these conditions have been satisfied already and few remaining steps will take effect soon. It is for this reason that the UFS is confident that its three MBA programmes will soon receive full accreditation.

2. WHAT ACCREDITATION DOES THE UFS HAVE FOR ITS MBA PROGRAMME?

The UFS’s School of Management received conditional accreditation for its three MBA programmes.

Two levels of accreditation are awarded to tertiary institutions for their MBA programmes, namely full accreditation and conditional accreditation. When a programme does not comply with the minimum requirements regarding a small number of criteria, conditional accreditation is given. This can be rectified during the short or medium term.

3. IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE ACADEMIC CORE OF THE UFS’s MBA PROGRAMMES?

No. The UFS is proud of its three MBA programmes’ reputation in the market and the positive feedback it receives from graduandi and their employers.

The MBA programmes of the UFS meet most of the minimum requirements of the evaluation process.

In particular, the key element of ‘teaching and learning’, which relates to the curriculum and content of the MBA programmes, is beyond question. In other words, the core of what is being taught in our MBA programmes is sound.

4. IS THE UFS’s MBA A WORTHWHILE QUALIFICATION?

Yes. Earlier this year, the School of Management – young as it is - was rated by employers as the best smaller business school in South Africa. This was based on a survey conducted by the Professional Management Review and reported in the Sunday Times Business Times, of 25 January 2004.

The UFS is committed to maintaining these high standards of quality, not only through compliance with the requirements of the CHE, but also through implementing its own quality assurance measures.

Another way in which we benchmark the quality of our MBA programmes is through the partnerships we have formed with institutions such as the DePaul University in Chicago and Kansas State University, both in the US, as well as the Robert Schuman University in France.

For this reason the UFS appreciates and supports the work of the CHE and welcomes its specific findings regarding the three MBA programmes.

It is understandable that the MBA review has caused some nervousness – not least among current MBA students throughout the country.

However, one principle that the UFS management is committed to is this: preparing all our students for a world of challenge and change. Without any doubt the MBA programme of the UFS is a solid preparation.

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