I am Ryan Bosch, a biochemistry student with past experience in applied enzymology for biowaste valorisation and in the characterisation of polysaccharide extracts using analytical chemistry/biochemistry and spectral techniques (Namely XRD, FTIR and NMR).

I am currently a member of the Eucalyptus and Pine pathogen interactions group, which specialises in investigating plant-disease interactions and plant defence in forest trees. This knowledge is then used to develop markers for disease resistance, which in turn are used to breed resilient trees for use in commercial forests in South Africa.

I investigate the chemical composition of leaves from different Eucalyptus trees that are either resistant or susceptible to a fungal pathogen. I aim to identify specific compounds that associate with resistance to the disease, which may then serve as the basis for marker-assisted breeding for Eucalyptus trees that can resist the fungus.

The main techniques I use include:

Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry
Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry
Univariate and multivariate Statistical analyses
Machine Learning (Potentially)