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

I completed my Bachelors degree in Biotechnology at the University of Pretoria in 2019. I joined the Hans Merensky Avocado Research Programme for my Honours (Genetics) degree in 2020, where I identified and validated crinkling and necrosis (CRNs) genes from the Phytophthora cinnamomi transcriptome during avocado infection.

I subsequently went on to receive my Master's degree with distinction in Genetics in 2023, as a member of the same research group. My dissertation was entitled ‘Identification and expression analysis of Phytophthora cinnamomi CRN effector genes during infection of Persea americana (Mill.)’. This research was a continuation of my honours work, where I molecularly characterised P. cinnamomi CRNs and assigned putative roles in cell death manipulation. This was achieved through analysis of CRN expression during the biotrophic and necrotrophic stages of avocado infection, sequencing of the CRN coding sequences, phylogenetic analyses, and protein modelling. This research highlighted numerous CRN candidates with putative roles as cell death inducers or suppressors. Additionally, the presence of alleles was found for many CRN genes, potentially resulting in varying roles of cell death between the encoded proteins. This allowed for a road to be paved for further research into these important molecular weapons utilised by P. cinnamomi.

Currently, I am working on my PhD. I intend to continue with my work in understanding the roles P. cinnamomi CRN genes play in cell death manipulation during avocado infection, as well as the underlining plant-pathogen interactions taking place.