The end of October saw the first intentional introductions of the parasitoid wasp Quadrastichus mendeli.

Phyloge-knows-it outwitted 12 teams to be crowned winners at FABI’s first virtual Quiz Night on 4 September.

FABIans joined young researchers from several countries for the South African Society of Bioinformatics Student Council (SASBi-SC) Online Student Symposium from 4-6 August. FABIans contributed two oral presentations and a project overview to the 30 presentations at the online symposium.

FABI students and their co-authors contributed 37 posters/graphical abstracts of the 157 of these presentations at the MSA conference.

The DNA Sanger Sequencing facility at the University of Pretoria (UP) hosted an annual in-house Introductory Microsatellite Workshop (IMW) for UP postgraduate students and staff from 4-11 May 2020.

The situation the world’s population currently finds itself in with the global-spread of the COVID-19 virus – just one invisible pathogen - bears direct parallels to the research work that has been done in the TPCP over the past 31 years in combatting plantation tree pests and diseases.

Twenty undergraduate students will gain hands-on scientific research experience as mentees in the CTHB Mentorship Programme.

The Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP) in FABI hosted a “Data Jamboree” on 7 February that saw 44 students in the research programme spend the day capturing historical data from the disease clinic.

Two FABIans have each earned a spot in the FameLab SA contest and they stand a chance to represent South Africa in the FameLab International finals in the United Kingdom.

FABI will be the place to be in 2020 for plant health research and events marking the United Nation’s International Year of Plant Health (IYPH 2020) said Prof. Bernard Slippers at the Institute’s opening on 13 January.

The French-South African Science and Innovation Days was held in the CSIR from 2-3 December.

What does the average biologist have to do with programming microprocessors? Prof. The GCRF pump-priming funding has allowed Prof. Photo caption: November Biomaker workshop participants.  

Two FABI PhD candidates, Benedicta Swalarsk-Parry and Jane Ramaswe recently returned from a three-month exchange visit to Pennsylvania State University. The visit is part of a strategic partnership between the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiologyin Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI) at the University of Pretoria.

Students and staff at FABI got their hands dirty and spent the morning on 23 November replanting 3,000 cuttings into potting bags at the FABI Nursery on the University of Pretoria’s experimental farm.