On Friday 13 August, members of the Macadamia Protection Programme along with other FABIans gathered to say farewell to Dr Arista Fourie. She initially joined the Institute as a mentorship student but later completed her PhD in Genetics entitled “A genomic approach towards understanding host specificity and pathogenicity in two Ceratocystis species” under the primary supervision of Prof. Irene Barnes and co-supervision of Proff. Brenda Wingfield, Mike Wingfield and Dr Magriet van der Nest. In 2019 Arista joined the Macadamia Protection Programme as a post-doctoral researcher for a project entitled “Analysis of the two-spotted stinkbug gut content to identify alternative hosts and characterise its gut microbiome”. FABI Director Prof. Bernard Slippers, members of her PhD committee as well as Dr Gerda Fourie thanked Arista for her significant contribution to FABI, not only in terms of high-quality science but also for her involvement in the day to day running of FABI. She will continue to collaborate with members of FABI, so this is not a final goodbye. The group also congratulated her and wished her well for her new postdoctoral position in the Plant Microbe Interactions research group, which is part of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The project will focus on rhizosphere-associated microbes and the improvement of biofertilizers.