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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

African Student Affairs Conference a huge success
2011-05-24

 
Mr Rudi Buys, UFS Dean of Student Affairs, Mr. Folabi Obembe, Managing Director of Worldview International, Ms Birgit Schreiber, Director of the Centre for Student support services at the University of the Western Cape, Dr. Augustinah Duyilemi, Dean of Student Affairs at the Adekunleh Ajasin University in Nigeria, Dr. Christina Lunceford, assistant Director for the Centre for Research on Educational Access and Leadership at California State University in America, and Prof. Cecil Bodibe, student affairs veteran and consultant.
Photo: Earl Coetzee

The African Student Affairs Conference (ASAC), which took place on our Main Campus last week, was a major success, with two days of lectures and discussions and two pleasant social gatherings, where delegates had the opportunity to get to know each other.

The conference, hosted on African soil for the first time, and co-hosted by the University of the Western Cape (UWC), started on Wednesday 18 May 2011 with an informal welcoming session. Delegates got to meet each other and Mr Rudi Buys, UFS Dean of Student Affairs, explained the meaning of South African words like "kuier" and "lekker'.

The official start of events took place on Thursday 19 May 2011, in the Reitz Hall in our Centenary Complex. The conference was attended by delegates from universities across the continent and aimed to place the focus on issues relating to student affairs in an African context.

Delegates shared and exchanged strategies, ideas and resources, and discussed issues related to the work of student affairs professionals. The conference hoped to promote an exchange of best practice and assist attendees in identifying successful programmes.

Among the topics discussed on the first day, were “Constructing Post-Conflict Democracy on campus: a case study of transformation of student governance and political engagement as post-conflict intervention”, by Mr. Buys, and a discussion on ways in which social and online media can be used to ease the challenges of student interaction, development and support, by Ms Birgit Schreiber, Director of the Centre for Student Support Services at UWC.

A panel discussion, led by Mr Buys and several members of our Interim Student Council (ISC), discussed the specific challenges faced at the UFS.  The importance of buy-in from role-players in decisions taken by University management in order to ensure their success, was discussed, using the UFS and our recent changes as an example.

The successful integration of residences on campus inevitably came under the spotlight and the recently resolved Reitz-saga was named as a catalyst in getting students less apathetic and more involved in attempts at creating racial and social harmony.

Dr Christina Lunceford, Assistant-Director of the Centre for Research on Educational Access and Leadership at California State University, presented a paper entitled A National Approach to Building Capacity in Student Affairs in South African Higher Education.

She commented on the fact that there is little or no philosophical framework or explicit theory that informs practice of student services in South Africa.

According to Dr Lunceford, student development should be a key concern for every department or unit within student services and emphasized the need for a centralized student development unit at each university.
She also touched on the need for institutions to implement support from international student affairs professional associations, professional development for student affairs practitioners, the utilization of technology to support professionals in the field, and working with international partners to explore future opportunities, as ways in which student affairs can be used to drive performance and change at universities.

The conference continued in the Scaena theatre on Friday 20 May 2011, with presentations by Dr Augustinah Duyileme, Dean of Student Affairs at Adekunle Ajasin University in Nigeria, and Prof. Bobby Mandew, Executive Director of Student Affairs at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

Dr Duyileme presented a paper on the challenges faced by Nigerian universities with regard to student conflict and protests, which often turn violent, and how such violence can be curbed through proper planning and management.

Prof. Mandew presented a very well-received presentation on UJ’s successful off-campus housing initiative, which involves home-owners and business owners in the areas surrounding their campuses.

Their approach demonstrated how proper planning can prevent problems associated with over-population in private homes and conflict with neighbours of the university, usually related to an influx of students into residential neighbourhoods.

This problem is faced by many universities, as more and more students flock to universities on the continent and campus residents cannot accommodate them.

The conference came to a close on Friday, with most delegates agreeing that the exchange of knowledge which took place was extremely valuable.

Ms Deborah Lahlan, of Nigeria, said: “This is an important conference for Africa and it should become a regular event.”
 

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