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Revolutionising wheat: Developing cultivars that maintain their quality in heat and drought

28 April 2023 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

UFS PhD student and food scientist Schae-Lee Olckers’ research could contribute to a stable supply of good quality wheat and bread, even in the face of climate change.

Follow your passion in order to find your purpose. This is the mantra of food scientist and University of the Free State (UFS) PhD student Schae-Lee Olckers, whose research is set to improve wheat quality by identifying which types of wheat are better able to tolerate stress, and which proteins are most important for producing high-quality bread.

“By grasping this, it is possible to ensure that we continue to have a stable supply of good quality wheat and bread, even in the face of climate change,” says Olckers, who believes wheat is one of the most important food grains in the human diet, and one of the most important staple cereal crops in the world.

Her PhD study, ‘The influence of abiotic stress on gluten protein and baking quality in bread wheat’, under the supervision of Dr Angie van Biljon and Prof Maryke Labuschagne in the Department of Plant Sciences, and Prof Garry Osthoff in the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry, is investigating how different levels of heat and drought stress – mostly due to climate change – affect the gluten protein composition of high-yield bread wheat.

Olckers is a food scientist at StartWell Foods (Pty) Ltd, a non-profit organisation that produces high-quality extrusion products for feeding schemes around the country. The products help to eliminate stunted growth among children.

Improving wheat breeding programmes

This research could help us find ways to adapt to climate change and continue to produce high-quality wheat and bread for people around the world. – Schae-Lee Olckers

Her research focuses on examining different types of wheat and investigating how proteins are affected by stressors like heat and drought, to understand how these stressors impact the quality of bread. She uses new proteomic methods to look at the different proteins in the wheat flour, to gain a better appreciation of how gluten proteins react to stress.

In this study Olckers is able to see how the proteins change in the various wheat cultivars, helping us to understand how the different types of wheat perform in baking, and how the proteins affect the final product.

She collaborates with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, that releases new wheat cultivars for developing countries. Their aim is to develop wheat cultivars that maintain their quality in different environments. To investigate the performance and characteristics of the seeds, both in the field and in the laboratory, CIMMYT did the field trials, quality assessment, and supplied the seeds for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and proteomics analysis.

Finding ways to adapt to climate change

She believes that understanding how these stressors impact the production of bread-baking quality in wheat will help scientists gain important insights into how climate change affects our food supply.

“Taking into consideration the current and projected intensifying heat and water deficit stresses, it is crucial to improve the understanding of these phenomena in order to implement new breeding strategies for sustainable wheat quality. This research could help us find ways to adapt to climate change and continue to produce high-quality wheat and bread for people around the world,” Olckers says.

News Archive

Kovsies to celebrate excellence at 2014 December Graduation Ceremony

2014-12-02

Live streaming: http://apps.ufs.ac.za/ufslivestreaming/

On Thursday 11 December 2014, the University of the Free State (UFS) will award degrees and qualifications during our Summer Graduation Ceremony at the Bloemfontein Campus.

The graduation will take place during two ceremonies in the Callie Human Centre, where master’s and PhD degrees will be awarded during the first ceremony at 09:30. Diplomas, certificates and undergraduate qualifications will be awarded to students from the School of Open Learning and the Faculty of Health Sciences at 14:30.

Radio personality, Redi Thlabi, and cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Susan Vosloo, will address the graduates.

Apart from her radio show on 702 and CapeTalk, Thlabi has also hosted local television news shows and anchored for international broadcasters like SKY and the BBC. In addition, she has presented two of her own TV shows: ‘Redi’ on Mzansi Magic and ‘South to North’ on Al-Jazeera.

Her first book, Endings and Beginnings (Jacana) received popular acclaim and is currently being turned into a screenplay for a movie.

Dr Susan Vosloo, a Kovsie alumnus, graduated in 1980. She completed her internship in Pretoria and spent the following year in Critical Care Medicine at Universitas Hospital, Bloemfontein, before starting her surgical training in Johannesburg.

She is currently in independent private practice at the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town, having also worked from 1998 – 2012 at the Vincent Pallotti Hospital in the same city.

Dr Vosloo maintains close ties with our university and has quite a number of addition roles to that of surgeon:

• member of the Council of the UFS;
• UFS Council Representative in the Senate;
• member of the Standing Advisory Committee of the School of Medicine, UFS;
• member of the Provincial Department of Health;
• Africa representative for the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society; and
• founding member of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.

Prof Boelie Wessels will also be awarded his 10th academic degree from the UFS since 1974. Adding his Honorary Doctorate degree to the list, it will make this his 11th degree. Prof Wessels is 84 years old and has 18-plus academic qualifications from various institutions – a phenomenal achievement.

Furthermore, Moses Lubinga and his wife, Stellah, will be the first married couple to be awarded their PhDs at the same graduation ceremony at the UFS. Mr Lubinga will receive his Doctorate in Agricultural Economics, while Mrs Lubinga’s PhD is in the field of Economic and Management Sciences.

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