Cape Town, South Africa – Dr Erna Blancquaert, lecturer in Grapevine and Wine Sciences at Stellenbosch University, was awarded the prestigious Viti- and Viniculture award at the annual Wine Harvest Commemorative Event. The event was hosted at Groot Constantia, South Africa’s oldest wine-producing farm, located in Cape Town.

The Wine Harvest Commemorative Event is a well-established custom in the South African wine industry that encourages all participants to strive for new heights of excellence. This year the event was held to honour the beginning of South Africa’s wine industry 364 years ago, and to pay tribute to four people who have paved the way for future generations.

Dr Blancquaert’s ground-breaking research in the field of viticulture has earned her this well-deserved recognition. Her dedication to the science of wine production and her contributions to the industry have been instrumental in advancing the field.

She made significant contributions to the winemaking industry through the development of novel concepts, technologies, and methodologies as well as the implementation and dissemination of those concepts, methodologies, and practises.

As a trailblazer in her field, Dr Blancquaert has achieved a significant milestone by becoming the first woman of colour to earn a PhD in Viticulture and Oenology. She has paved the way for future generations of women and people of colour in the industry.

“I am deeply honoured to receive this award and grateful for the support of my colleagues and mentors,” said Dr Blancquaert. “My passion for viticulture is rooted in a deep appreciation for the beauty and complexity of grapevines and the role they play in producing one of the world’s most beloved beverages.”

Dr Blancquaert also supervises Master’s and PhD students in Viticulture and Oenology, Sustainable Agriculture, and Wine Biotechnology. She enjoys transferring ideas to students and altering mindsets from all walks of life and is devoted to addressing persistent bias in the wine industry and in academia in a positive way.

According to the South African Wine Harvest the recipient of the Viti- and Viniculture award is someone who has developed new ideas, technologies, and methods within the wine-making industry, and also implemented and transferred these ideas and methodologies, changing mindsets and benefiting the South African wine industry as a whole.

The Viti- and Viniculture award recognises excellence in the study of grapevines and wine production. It is a testament to Dr Blancquaert’s hard work and dedication to advancing the field.

Martin John (MJ) Richard, an MSc student in the Fruit and Postharvest Pathology programme at Stellenbosch University (SU), won the Young Minds award at the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) International Pear Symposium. The event was hosted at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in January 2023.

Supervised by Drs Julia Meitz-Hopkins and Cheryl Lennox, MJ delivered a presentation on his Hortgro Science-funded project that examines the epidemiology and postharvest control of black rot in Forelle pears in the Western Cape. With South Africa being the fifth largest exporter of pears worldwide, postharvest decay caused by latent fungal pathogens can result in significant economic losses. Therefore, to maintain the quality of the shipped produce, postharvest fungicides are applied during packing. MJ’s study is the first to investigate postharvest control options for the emerging pathogens causing black rot in South Africa.

His research focused on the identification of emerging fungal pathogens of Forelle pears and the control of the main causal pathogen (Diplodia seriata) using registered postharvest fungicides, namely the active ingredients fludioxonil and pyrimethanil. MJ evaluated the efficacy of the two ingredients in vitro, followed by fruit trials using a lab drench.

The International Academy of Wood Science (IAWS) recently announced that Dr Adefemi Alade, who completed his PhD in Wood Science at Stellenbosch University (SU) in 2022, had won their coveted annual doctoral award.

The award recognises outstanding dissertation research at doctoral level by students globally. Adefemi was supervised by Profs Brand Wessels and Luvuyo Tyhoda from SU’s Department of Forest and Wood Science. His dissertation examined the effect of durability treatment on adhesive bonding of Eucalyptus grandis wood.

The use of new engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) has increased exponentially in the developed world over the past few years. However, the adoption of these materials as building elements proves problematic in some parts of the world where wood bio-deterioration is a concern. CLT members cannot be treated after production because of dimensional constraints of treatment facilities. Treatment of lamellas before gluing is most effective, but poses technical problems relating to adhesion in the glue line.

In his study of potential treatment options and adhesive systems to manufacture durable CLT components from the wood of the Eucalyptus grandis, Adefemi identified viable and greener process pathways that could be readily adopted by industry. His study results were accepted for publication in various scientific journals. He has since taken up a position as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Idaho, United States.

The first and second runners-up for the IAWS award were Drs Lu Yu (University of Tennessee, United States) and Ondrej Dvoracek (Graz University of Technology, Austria) respectively.

* For more on Adefemi’s thesis, consult the IAWS website at https://www.iaws-web.org/downloads/Bulletin-2022_2.pdf.

By Dr Jane Battersby-Lennard (University of Cape Town) and Julia Harper (Stellenbosch University)

The Nourished Child project – a collaboration between City University (United Kingdom), the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities, Stellenbosch University (SU), the Southern African Food Lab, UNICEF and the Western Cape provincial government – aims to better understand the experiences of mothers and caregivers trying to feed their children nutritious diets.

Launched in 2020, the project works closely with community partners in the urban neighbourhoods of Masiphumelele (Cape Town) and Zweletemba (Worcester). The end goal is to improve the design of food and nutrition-specific policies and programmes.

The researchers have found that the food choices of mothers and caregivers in these communities are shaped by limited income, poor access to water, sanitation and reliable energy, their housing type, the feeding opportunities provided by their local early childhood development (ECD) centres, and the kinds of nutrition information available to them.

Mothers’ decisions about how long to breastfeed their children are shaped in part by the information provided by the clinics and programmes such as the national Department of Health’s MomConnect initiative. Other factors that play a role in this regard are shared community knowledge, the influence of grandmothers who sometimes provide vital financial support, limited support from the child’s father, and the pervasive influence of follow-on formula. One key project deliverable has been a series of recommendations to broaden existing programmes so as to incorporate these factors.

Moreover, the project has identified new entry points for the state to address food and nutrition security by incorporating nutrition into all other government services. Indeed, government mandates such as spatial planning, basic service delivery and formally registering ECD centres are all key elements of food policy and security. Therefore, explicitly addressing nutrition in policies and programmes in these and other fields can deliver significant benefits for food security.

In his 2022 State of the Nation address, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa called on all social partners – government, labour, business and communities – to work together to grow the country’s economy, create jobs and combat hunger. The Nourished Child project has found many examples where this kind of collective responsibility and systems approach is bearing fruit. In Zweletemba, for instance, the mothers explained how their entire households had received food parcels from their children’s registered ECD centres during the Covid-19 lockdown as a result of private-sector and non-governmental organisation engagement. In Masiphumelele, in turn, there are ECD centres with thriving gardens that feed not only the children at the centres, but also donate produce to local community kitchens. This has been enabled through civil society funding, training and other support.

Yet perhaps the most exciting opportunity to improve child nutrition through a systems approach is the emerging network of “nutrition ambassadors” in Masiphumelele. An initiative of research participants and community members themselves, the nutrition ambassadors serve as advocates for healthy diets, advancing the cause of child malnutrition in their community.

The costs of poor child nutrition are vast – both for our present and our future. To effectively improve child nutrition will take a systems approach. It will require the involvement of all tiers of government, the private sector and civil society, with strong representation from the communities most affected. While we are starting to see green shoots within and beyond the state, we still have a long way to go.

Stellenbosch University (SU) is making its mark as a world-renowned provider of conservation training. Prof Karen Esler from the University’s Department of Conservation Ecology recently returned from Gland, Switzerland, where she attended the first post-Covid face-to-face meeting of the IUCN Academy – a collaboration between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and a select group of global academic partners.

In 2021, the IUCN reached out to SU and another six top universities worldwide to help them develop innovative training in the broad field of nature conservation, following a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to the discipline. Consequently, SU, the University of California, Berkeley (United States), Cambridge University (United Kingdom), the University of Campinas (Brazil), Tsinghua University (China), ETH Zürich (Switzerland) and the Australia National University (Australia) signed a memorandum of understanding, and the IUCN Academy was launched in September of that year.

The academy seeks to harness the expertise of its academic partners to help build capacity at key pressure points in support of the goals of the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The GBF, adopted at the COP15 climate conference in December 2022, calls for enhanced “communication, education and awareness on biodiversity”, including through partnerships with academia and by “integrating transformative education on biodiversity into formal, non-formal and informal education programmes”.

“I see SU’s participation in the IUCN Academy as a remarkable opportunity to connect the wide-ranging and top-class insights of our local academics to global conservation and restoration theory and practice,” says Karen. “We should be very proud that the IUCN has sought us out for this global initiative, and I am excited not only to contribute, but also to feed new lessons and insights back into our own environment.”

In December 2022, delegates from across sub-Saharan Africa attended an advanced course in fruit fly control in Stellenbosch. The course was developed within the framework of the international project F³: Fruit Fly Free, which is funded by the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF).

Fruit fly training has been presented by Drs Marc de Meyer and Massimiliano Virgilio from the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, Belgium, in various parts of Africa for a number of years. This particular course forms part of a series of tutorials designed in collaboration with SU’s Prof Pia Addison from the Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology. Invited guest speakers included Drs Minette Karsten, Aruna Manrakhan and Francois Bekker (SU research associates), Prof Chris Weldon (University of Pretoria), Dr David Nestel (Israel) and Dr Welma Pieterse (SU).

Fruit flies pose a severe threat to agricultural production and productivity in Africa. Fruit fly infestations reduce the quality of produce, disrupt trade, and result in huge financial losses, which ultimately affect livelihoods and food security on a continent that can least afford it. 

The six participants hailing from Mozambique, Burundi, Uganda, Senegal and South Africa were fully funded by the STDF. All six had prior experience of fruit fly research. Therefore, the course aimed to provide more detailed training to equip participants as key experts in their regions in relation to the taxonomy, trapping and monitoring of fruit flies, as well as record-keeping and the use of databases.

Intended as a “train the trainers” initiative, the course will hopefully result in further localised workshops in South Africa and the rest of the sub-Saharan African region to provide training on basic fruit fly identification and monitoring.

The South African Society of Crop Production (SASCP), the Soil Science Society of South Africa (SSSSA) and the Southern African Society for Horticultural Sciences (SASHS) hosted their annual combined congress from 23 to 26 January 2023. Thirteen delegates from the Department of Agronomy at Stellenbosch University (SU) attended the event in Pretoria, presenting posters and papers while rubbing shoulders with big names in industry and academia.

Dr Estelle Kempen presented to the SASHS and was also elected to the organisation’s council, while Dr Flackson Tshuma delivered a talk to the SSSSA. The new brand-aligned SU poster and PowerPoint presentation templates served delegates well. Striking maroon-and-gold posters were submitted by Beatrix Alweendo, Happiness Baloyi, Guy Musto, Mosima Mabitsela, Mulweli Machidze and Louise Bestbier. Hanneke Augustyn, Guy Musto, Bruno Herrmann, Gert Conradie, Izane Crous, Sandra Clarke and Lisa Matthews delivered engaging student presentations.

The SU delegation scooped more awards than any other university represented at the event. Hanneke Augustyn received the Rovic Leers award for best Conservation Agriculture poster of 2022, while Dr PJ Pieterse won best South African Journal of Plant and Soil paper for both 2021and 2022 . The student award for best presentation of 2022 went to Amandrie Louw, and Lisa Matthews received the 2023 award. In addition, Lisa won the student award for best Conservation Agriculture presentation of 2023 for her talk on greenhouse gas emissions from different crop rotation systems in the Swartland region of the Western Cape.

Louise Bestbier took home the president’s award for best poster of 2023 for her poster on Paraquat resistance and germination in Lolium species. Finally, the dean’s relief trophy for best paper by a young scientist was awarded to Charge Viljoen .

Congratulations to these staff and students who kept the SU banner flying high. You did us proud!

The Agricultural Economics Department at Stellenbosch University (SU) has a new chair. Having assumed office in January 2023, Prof André Jooste boasts an impressive CV with over 24 years’ experience across various disciplines in the field of agriculture.

As an academic, André’s previous endeavours include being former associate professor and chair of the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of the Free State. At the National Agricultural Marketing Council, he spearheaded the establishment of the Markets and Economic Research Centre (MERC), which he developed into a highly regarded policy advisory unit in the South African and international context. As chief executive officer of Potatoes SA, André led this industry body in strategy development and the implementation of its core business mandate, including building business and public-sector relations. In 2013, he received the Agriculturalist of the Year award of Agricultural Writers SA North. André currently serves on various agricultural industry councils and government committees and has extensive networks in the national and global private and public sector.

When asked about his vision for the Department during his tenure as chair, he says: “The brain trust in the Department has made its mark in agriculture in South Africa over the years and contributed significantly to an agricultural sector recognised globally for expertise, sustainability and resilience. My vision is to build on these successes in a rapidly changing environment.” To this end, André will rely on the entire Agricultural Economics team. “To sustain our success, staff need to keep pace with, and be involved in, the engine room where changes occur. We must ensure that we prepare students for the future, equipping them with relevant knowledge and skills. At the same time, our research must remain industry-focused and relevant. The task is too big for one person, so the Department will undertake this journey together as a team to ensure that we remain relevant and provide the necessary leadership and critical thinking to make a meaningful contribution to society.”

For more information about SU’s Agricultural Economics Department or to explore collaboration opportunities, please email joostea@sun.ac.za

From 2 to 5 October 2022, colleagues from the Agricultural Economics Department at Stellenbosch University (SU) participated in the 59th annual conference of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA) in Swakopmund, Namibia. Under the conference theme “How recent value chain disruptions shaped agri-food systems in sub-Saharan Africa”, delegates were able to share expertise and explore opportunities for collaboration.

SU master’s student Desmond Annandale, supervised by Profs André Jooste and Johan van Rooyen, presented a paper from his thesis. The paper examined the use of composite indices in identifying potential agricultural export markets in the African region, more particularly the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is tasked to expand intra-African trade and integration. Desmond used a country priority index comprising three dimensions known to affect an export destination’s trade potential (namely market conditions, business environment and logistical conditions). His analysis confirmed the index as a valuable first step towards identifying export potential to African countries. However, some deviations from actual trade do occur due to geographical proximity from South Africa, the availability of a product in the home country, the competitiveness of South African products relative to other countries, and the expansion of South African retailers to other African countries.

SU representatives also participated in a panel discussion on the effects of Covid-19, climate shocks and the Russian-Ukraine war, or the so-called “perfect storm” for global food systems. The session was organised by the University’s Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP). The discussion centred on the rapid rise in global agricultural commodity prices, uncertainty in futures markets for agricultural products, rising input and energy prices, and uncertainty regarding current and future market dynamics and its implication for food systems. Highlighting the current effects of external shocks on food systems, the panel provided a global overview and presented specific case studies for Namibia and South Africa. In addition, they debated how alternative future outcomes may inform the dos and don’ts for governments and strategic private-sector decisions.

The event also saw Dr Melissa van der Merwe, AEASA president and SU lecturer, deliver her inaugural presidential address, in which she explored whether Agricultural Economics could be considered a discipline in crisis. Unpacking the status of the discipline in terms of teaching, research, and the AEASA, she concluded that stakeholders in Agricultural Economics training and research need to carefully manage their contributions and efforts to continue delivering graduates who are equipped with relevant skills and knowledge to meet the changing needs of the market.

Kayamandi High School attracts learners from as far as Franschhoek, Jonkershoek, and Pniel. However, the majority of learners are fed through the two local primary schools. The School offers all three recognised agricultural subjects, namely Agricultural Sciences, Agricultural Technology, and Agricultural Management Practices, and is a true gem as far as high school agricultural education is concerned. Moreover, the School is privileged to have dedicated teachers who have previously gone to great lengths to maximise learner exposure to postschool agricultural education by organising trips to higher education institutions in the Eastern Cape. Collaboration between the School and additional higher education institutions such as the Elsenburg Agricultural Training Institute and Stellenbosch University is a prospective opportunity that can develop agricultural study and career paths and aid in learner success.

To this end, Stellenbosch University’s Department of Agronomy hosted 31 learners from Kayamandi High School for a Practical Demonstration Day on the 11 November. The learners are all in Grade 11 and study Agricultural Management Practices. The day started with a water and carbon cycle presentation in class, which highlighted the importance of these two resources in crop production. This was followed by various demonstrations covering soil organic matter estimation, water quality determination and crop management evaluation. This is the first of other similar demonstrations to be offered to Kayamandi and other high schools in 2023 through the Agricultural Sustainability Education Lab. This first offering was a resounding success following the invaluable role of Dr Estelle Kempen and a dedicated team of senior and postgraduate students from Agronomy, including Beatrix Alweendo, Princess Dolly Tuaandi, Nellah Mabasa, Louise Bestbier, Hanneke Augustyn and Chantal Ndhlovu, who accepted to participate in and contribute to the proposed programme of the Agricultural Sustainability Education Lab (AgSus EduLab).

Through the Practical Demonstrations programme, the AgSus EduLab takes on an approach of experiential agricultural education at secondary education level. As a suitable alternative to traditional learning, experiential learning directly capitalises skills and attitudes related to critical thinking and problem solving, being less anchored in mechanical learning and memorising, while accelerating collaboration between schools and the AgriSciences Faculty, particularly towards aligning to STEAMAC (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, Agriculture and Coding).

We look forward to what 2023 presents and the various proposed programmes. This includes a similar practical demonstration hosted in collaboration with the Faculty’s Institute for Plant Biotechnology (IPB).