Department of Genetics
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Plant Breeding
AIM & MISSION

The Stellenbosch University Plant Breeding Laboratory (SU-PBL), situated on Welgevallen experimental farm, focuses on the overall crop improvement of small grains via conventional breeding methods. As part of this, the group has a wheat pre-breeding programme and a semi-commercial triticale breeding programme.

Wheat and Triticale breeding programme:​

Since 2002, a marker-assisted recurrent selection (MS-MARS) scheme has been used to enrich a local wheat base population with novel genes. These genes are pyramided to breed wheat lines that have a broad-spectrum resistance to common wheat pathogens, including wheat rusts. These advanced breeding lines are released annually as wheat rust resistance nurseries and can be utilised by South African wheat breeding programmes as crossing parents.​

Apart from the wheat pre-breeding programme, SU-PBL has released 14 commercial cultivars as part of their semi-commercial Triticale breeding programme. Most of the Triticale currently planted in the Western Cape has been bred at SU-PBL. This man-made hybrid is a cross between wheat and rye and can thrive under marginal conditions.​​

Crop wild relatives and digital phenotyping:

SU-PBL operates a crop wild relative collection consisting of species material that is related to wheat. This material includes 22 different species from four different genera that can be crossed using conventional breeding methods to wheat for crop improvement.​

Digitization of manual phenotyping methods can increase the accuracy of plant phenotyping and assist in identifying new traits that can be used in pre-breeding programmes. One example is the use of object detection- and classification models, that can assist breeders to measure and identify specific phenotypes more accurately.

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Principal Investigators
Mr. Willem Botes
Laboratory: Plant Breeding, IPBB
Mrs. Lezaan Hess
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Ms. Cecile Bester
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Technical Officers
Mrs. Aletta Ellis
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Henzel Saul
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Kallie Van Wyk
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Post-Doctoral
Dr Nicholas Le Maitre
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Intern
Kishalya Haridass
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
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Gallery, projects, staff and students
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Funders & research partners

Mr. Willem Botes

M.Sc. Agric, B.Sc.Agric
Research Environment - Plant Breeding
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Teaching Courses: Biometry 212, Biometry 242, Genetics 722
Short bio Willem Botes, the current Head of the Department of Genetics, is a small grain breeder who has taught plant breeding, quantitative genetics and biometry at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. He has been the head of the Stellenbosch University Plant Breeding Laboratory (SU-PBL) since 2008 and has obtained plant breeder’s rights to several successful commercial rye and triticale cultivars. Under his guidance, SU-PBL have also released numerous wheat rust resistance nurseries to commercial and public wheat breeding programmes, consisting of advanced breeding lines that can be used for local crop improvement. He has served as the chair of the Southern African Plant Breeders Association, is an member of the International Triticale Association and actively participates on various advisory boards as a plant breeder.
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Mrs. Lezaan Hess

MSc Genetics
Research Environment - Plant Genetics
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Teaching Courses: Genetics 414 ; Crop Protection 152
Short bio Mrs Lezaan Hess is a Junior Lecturer in the Department of Genetics at Stellenbosch University. She is also a passionate plant breeder and research team member at the Plant Breeding Laboratory. Her research focuses on the genetic improvement of biotic and abiotic stress resistance in wheat. She is involved in the National Wheat Breeding Platform where she conducts the wheat pre-breeding programme. Through her research efforts in plant breeding, she has contributed towards the distribution of genetically improved wheat nurseries to public and private breeding companies, to ultimately assist South African farmers to increase their wheat yields and profitability.
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Ms. Cecile Bester

MScAgric, BScAgric
Research Environment - Plant Breeding
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Teaching Courses: Biometry 212, Biometry 242, Biometry 311, Biometry 821
Short bio Ms. Bester is a wheat breeder with an interest in plant phenomics. Her research focuses on the use of digital phenotyping, machine learning, and diversity analysis of common bread wheat and wheat crop wild relatives. This work forms part of the greater Stellenbosch University Plant Breeding Laboratory, a research group focused on pre-breeding and crop improvement of small cereal grains.
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Dr Nicholas Le Maitre

BSc, BSc Honours, MSc, PhD.
Research Environment - I work at the Stellenbosch University Plant Breeding Laboratory where we have a wheat pre-breeding program.
Laboratory: Plant Breeding
Short bio I have a PhD in Biochemistry from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. I have completed several post doctoral fellowships and I am currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Plant Breeding Laboratory at Stellenbosch University. My interests lie in molecular biology and bioinformatics, specifically the regulation of cellular processes, transcriptomics as well as phylogenetics and evolution. We are currently examining local wild relatives of crop species for traits of benefit to commercial crops species, such as salinity tolerance and disease resistance.
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