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28 April 2023 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied
Schae-Lee Olckers’
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

Horse-riding therapy improves self-confidence in children
2016-05-10


This group of Honours students in Psychology at the University of the Free State was honoured with the best postgraduate Service Learning award at the prize-giving function of the Faculty of the Humanities. From the left are Adriana de Vries, Hershel Meyerowitz, Simoné le Roux, Wijbren Nell, Melissa Taljaard, and Gerán Lordan. Photo: Marizanne Cloete.

Horse-riding therapy helps to improve self-confidence in children, and changes their perception of themselves. It puts them in a totally new environment where they can be free of any judgement.

According to Wijbren Nell, who achieved his Honours degree in Psychology at the University of the Free State (UFS), this is the ideal therapy when working with children with disabilities. He said it was amazing to see how they developed.

He was part of a group of Honours students in Psychology who received the best postgraduate Service Learning award in the Faculty of the Humanities for their community project. In 2015, this project by Wijbren, Hershel Meyerowitz, Gerán Lordan, Melissa Taljaard, Simoné le Roux, and Adriana de Vries, was part of their module Community and Social Psychology. They were honoured at the Faculty’s prize-giving function on 15 April 2016.

Purpose of project

“Our purpose with the project was to demonstrate to the children that they could still accomplish something, despite their disabilities,” Wijbren said. The students work on a weekly basis with learners from the foundation phase of the Lettie Fouché School in Bloemfontein. Marie Olivier’s Equistria Therapeutic Development Trust serves as the site for the community project. She has a long standing partnership with the UFS.

Horse-riding and therapy

According to Wijbren, the idea was to stimulate the psychomotor functioning of the children, as well as to promote their psychological well-being. He said research has shown that there is incredible therapeutic value in horse-riding. In this specific case, it has improved the children’s self-confidence, as they may have a poor self-image as a result of their disabilities.

“At the beginning of the year, there was a girl who didn’t even want to come close to a horse, let alone getting onto the horse. We kept on trying, and, once she was on the horse, we couldn’t get her down. This was the amazing thing about the project,” said Wijbren.

Award a surprise

Wijbren said the award was a honour and surprise to his group. He was full of praise for Dr Pravani Naidoo, a lecturer in Psychology at the UFS, who coordinates the therapeutic horse riding project. “She has a tremendous passion for this project, and challenged us to think on our feet. She is a real inspiration.”

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