FABIans return from their sabbatical 2023-03-04
FABIans, Dr Neriman Yilmaz and Prof. Cobus Visagie (and their daughter Luna) recently travelled to the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (WI) in Utrecht the Netherlands as part of the Mycobiomics Project supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Research and Innovation Staff Exchanges (MSCA-RISE) grant. Neriman worked on the genera Bisifusarium and Pseudopithomyces with Prof. Pedro Crous, Dr Jos Houbraken and Dr Jerome Collemare. Cobus worked with Jos, editing and updating the accepted species list of Eurotiales (including Aspergillus, Penicillium and Talaromyces) following the previous list published in Houbraken et al. (2020). He also finalised two additional papers, one on the yeast Blastobotrys and another on Penicillium and Talaromyces diversity previously captured in the PPRI culture collection of South Africa. Both Neriman and Cobus presented their research at the Monday seminars at WI. Cobus and Neriman (and Luna) would like to express their gratitude to the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute for their generous support and hospitality.
During their visit, they also had the opportunity to visit Prof. Sarah de Saeger's group at Ghent University in Belgium. Sarah is the director of Mytox-SOUTH, of which FABI is a partner. Neriman gave a talk entitled "Fantastic mycotoxigenic fungi and where to find them in South Africa" and had fruitful round table discussions. They look forward to continuing their collaboration.