FABI recently celebrated the successful completion of Claudette Dewing’s PhD. Claudette presented her Prestige Seminar on 9 October. Her PhD project “Uncovering fungal diversity in South African dairy pastures and its implications for animal health” was supervised by Prof. Cobus Visagie, Dr Neriman Yilmaz, Prof. Emma Steenkamp and Prof. Brenda Wingfield. The external examiners for her thesis were Dr Belinda Janse van Rensburg (ARC-Grain Crops, Potchefstroom) and Dr Bevan Weir (Bioeconomy Science Institute, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, New Zealand), and Prof. Martin Coetzee was the internal examiner.

Claudette’s research represents the first comprehensive survey of the fungal communities associated with Eastern Cape dairy pastures, a region known for outbreaks of facial eczema (Sporidesmin-Induced Liver Disease (SILD) in livestock. Through extensive culturing and DNA-based analyses, her work identified over 700 fungal strains to 132 species across 55 genera. Among these were Pseudopithomyces toxicarius, the producer of the toxin sporidesmin, as well as multiple undescribed species. Three of these were newly described as F. cumulatum, F. mariecurieae and F. pascuum in her study. Using an integrated approach combining chemical and genomic analyses, Claudette further explored the secondary metabolite potential of the newly described Fusarium species. Her findings revealed the capacity to produce both regulated (e.g., deoxynivalenol, nivalenol, zearalenone) and emerging mycotoxins such as beauvericin and equisetin, highlighting the agricultural and food safety risks associated with pasture fungi.

Congratulations to Dr Claudette Dewing on this outstanding achievement!