I am currently a Doctoral candidate in Genetics within the Hans Merensky Avocado Research Programme, under the supervision of Dr. Velushka Swart and Professor Noëlani van den Berg.

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at the University of Pretoria in 2019. In 2020, I joined the Hans Merensky Avocado Research Programme to pursue my Honours degree in Genetics, during which I identified and validated crinkling and necrosis (CRN) genes from the Phytophthora cinnamomi transcriptome during avocado infection.

I went on to obtain my Master’s degree with distinction in Genetics in 2023 as part of the same research group. My dissertation, titled “Identification and expression analysis of Phytophthora cinnamomi CRN effector genes during infection of Persea americana (Mill.)”, expanded on my Honours research. I molecularly characterised P. cinnamomi CRN genes and proposed their potential roles in modulating plant cell death. This work involved analysing CRN expression during the biotrophic and necrotrophic stages of avocado infection, sequencing CRN coding regions, conducting phylogenetic analyses, and performing protein modelling. The study identified several CRN candidates with putative functions as cell death inducers or suppressors. Furthermore, allelic variation was detected in many CRN genes, suggesting possible functional diversity among the encoded proteins. These findings laid the groundwork for future investigations into the molecular mechanisms employed by P. cinnamomi during host infection.

My PhD builds directly on this foundation and focuses on the functional characterisation of P. cinnamomi CRN proteins. I am investigating their roles in cell death manipulation using Agrobacterium-mediated transient transformation, confocal microscopy, and western blotting. In addition, I aim to optimise a CRISPR-Cas gene-editing system to knock out key candidate CRN genes in P. cinnamomi, enabling detailed investigation of their contributions to pathogenicity and virulence during avocado infection.