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Plant ecophysiologist Dr Richard Hammond of the University of Florida presented a special seminar in FABI on 21 January.

FABI is a research partner in the recently launched five-year project ‘Management of forest pests and diseases of forest crops in Ethiopia’.

FABI congratulates Prof. Mike Wingfield on being included on the Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers 2024 for the eight consecutive year!

The University of Pretoria hosted the joint South African Society for Bioinformatics and South African Genetics Society BIO2024 conference at the Future Africa campus.

FABI is proud of the 19 graduates being capped at the University of Pretoria’s Spring Graduation Ceremony.

Prof. Sanushka Naidoo and Dr Demissew Teshome recently attended and presented at the 2024 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference in the USA.

Congratulations to Demissew Teshome on the successful completion of his PhD as part of the Eucalyptus Pine Pathogen Interaction (EPPI) research group.

ABI congratulates its Director, Prof. Bernard Slippers, on winning the National Science and Technology Forum Management Award at the NSTF-South32 Awards on 11 July.

Thirteen FABIans attended the recent IUFRO World Congress in Stockholm where four members received prestigious awards.

FABI recently acquired a Keyence VHX-7000 Series Digital Microscope. This is the first of its kind in Africa and will make a major contribution to the microscopy capacity at the institute.

FABI is pleased to announce Dr Neriman Yilmaz's appointment as Senior Lecturer.

FABI congratulates Dr Firehiwot Eshetu on the successful completion of her PhD degree.

FABI’s Prof. Brett Hurley and Dr Mesfin Gossa and FAO’s Dr Shiroma Sathyapala and Natalia Cano organised a FISNA-hosted webinar titled “Forest Health & Wildlife: behaviour and effect of forest-damaging mammals”.

Professors Mike and Brenda Wingfield, along with Dr Nam Pham, have been surveying Eucalyptus trees while at the University of Florida.

FABI celebrated its 25^th anniversary at a symposium hosted at Future Africa on the morning of 17 November.

FABI recognised excellence by members of the Institute at the recent FABI Awards ceremony.

The EPPI team completed the second large scale inoculation trial as part of a study that aims to identify DNA markers associated with resistance against Chrysoporthe austroafricana

Prof. Sanushka Naidoo presented her Inaugural Lecture as a full Professor in the University of Pretoria’s Senate Hall on 17 October.

Members of the EPPI research group travelled to Kwambonabi in the KwaZulu-Natal province to evaluate and harvest one of the biggest in-field inoculations with the pathogen Crysoporthe austroafricana.

FABI’s official opening, held on 16 January in the University of Pretoria’s Sanlam Auditorium, celebrated the Institute’s 25^th anniversary.

The EPPI team has been undertaking a large-scale greenhouse trial running for a third consecutive year since 2020.

Members of the EPPI research group recently travelled to KZN to perform in-field inoculation of Fusarium circinatum on 3296 hybrid pines

A video interview with FABI founding Director, Professor Mike Wingfield has been published online on the YouTube channel of the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF). Click here to watch the full video

Early in 2020, Dr Andi Wilson and her PhD supervisors published a paper in the journal Fungal Genetics and Biology that detailed the knockout of a novel mating gene in Huntiella omanensis using the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system. The video represents a new way of communicating research - particularly novel techniques and protocols that are not always fully described in research papers. Excitingly, the video produced for this project is the first JoVE video to have been shot in Africa.

Four FABIans (Vinolia Danki, Dr Tuan Duong, Dr Andi Wilson and Prof. Andi and Brenda were joined in the making of the video by Tuan and Vinolia.

For the first time in its 23-year history, FABI hosted a virtual Society for the Presentation of Outrageous Findings (SPOOF) event on 17 July. FABIans submitted nine pre-recorded videos, which in the spirit of the time, reflected the lighter moments of a nation under lockdown. The Gene Jockeys took the prize for the Best Abstract (with the subliminal message “Vote for us. FABI Director Prof.

Professor Zander Myburg, research leader of the Forest Molecular Genetics (FMG) Research Group in FABI was awarded the prestigious Biotechnologist of the Year Award by the Institute of Forest Biosciences (IFB).

At this year's Annual TPCP meetings, Prof. Mike Wingfield shared seven attributes he considered central to the success of the 30-year-old programme.