CenGen - Plant & Pathogen Genomic Services

Celebrating 15 years of excellence with new robotics!

CenGen celebrated their 15th birthday in style on 31 May 2018. At the same time, new, state of the art LGC robotic systems for high-throughput sample processing were inaugurated. These instruments were installed at CenGen through SAB & AB InBev Public Interest Commitment Investments to impact and benefit South Africa. Read more at https://www.netwerk24.com/landbou/Nuus/genetiese-maatskappy-spog-met-nuwe-robotstelsels-20180601

CenGen offers various genomic related services to plant breeders, producers and agricultural-related industries. The focus is to implement and utilise high-throughput molecular technologies in various applications involving crop and horticultural plants as well as fungi (e.g. wheat, barley, maize, grapevine, citrus, deciduous fruit- and nut trees, truffles and a range of plant pathogens).

CenGen customises each experimental layout in terms of size and specificity according to every client’s needs.

Applications include:

Cultivar identity determinations and purity testing using DNA fingerprinting techniques
Confirmation of the presence or absence of specific genes to assist in selection of breeding lines (marker-assisted selection)
Confirmation of correct species’ identity in the case of Tuber (truffles) before inoculating trees for truffle production.
CenGen is also involved in Research and Development through their involvement in various academic research projects.

Latest News, Events & Articles

Hosting the future generation

The CenGen team recently hosted three honours students from Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Department of Genetics. The three ladies (pictured from left to right: Keshia Holster, Sasha-Leigh Maart and Bianca Kruger) visited the lab as part of their practical training for a course module in plant breeding. CenGen shared with them the exciting research and applied… Continue Reading

A new team member!

In March 2019 CenGen was privileged to gain a new team member, Ms Kirsty Botha. Kirsty completed a master’s degree at the University of Pretoria in 2017, specialising in plant physiology and biotechnology. She has the mammoth task of being responsible for all aspects of the wheat research projects (internationally & nationally funded) that are… Continue Reading

UK Science and Innovation Network in South Africa reaches out to SA Wheat Industry

Funding provided by the UK Science and Innovation Network in South Africa enabled the hosting of the highly successful Bioinformatics and Wheat Genomics II workshop in Worcester (SA), which focused on the discipline-specific training in bioinformatics and wheat genomics of scientists from the African continent. This workshop also effectively built on the networks established through… Continue Reading

DIPLOMICS increases capacity at CenGen to serve Agri-sector

DIPLOMICS, an initiative of the Department of Sciences and Technology (DST), recently placed a QuantStudio 5 Real-Time PCR System along with two other instruments at CenGen. This is part of DIPLOMICS’ goal to strengthen infrastructure capacity at service laboratories in South Africa. Riegardt Johnson, applications specialist at Thermo Fisher Scientific, provided a full day of… Continue Reading

The principal components of population genetics

Four CenGen staff members (Renée Prins, Lizaan Rademeyer, Kelly Breeds and Elsabet Wessels) and Marizanne Horn (Sensako) were privileged to receive training in population genetics in the comfort of their own laboratory on 29 January 2019. Since July 2018, Renée has officially been affiliated with the Department of Genetics, Stellenbosch University, and in exchange for… Continue Reading

PANNAR wheat breeder visits CenGen

On 21-22 January 2019, André du Toit, wheat breeder from PANNAR, visited CenGen for an annual project meeting. As part of the molecular service laboratory (MSL), CenGen delivers a service to the wheat breeding programmes of PANNAR and Sensako by screening their breeding lines for genes that they’re interested in. This molecular marker service for… Continue Reading

Attending Plant & Animal Genome: The largest Ag-Genomics Meeting in the World

Renée Prins had the opportunity to attend PAGXXVII in January 2019 (http://intlpagorg/2018/) in San Diego, California. This meeting brings together more than 3000 leading plant and animal geneticists and researchers and boasts more than 130 exhibits, 150 workshops and 1 100 posters. One of these posters was presented by Renée on the cloning of QYr.sgi-4A.1… Continue Reading

Designing Future Wheat

In November 2018 Elsabet Wessels had the opportunity to attend the Designing Future Wheat (DFW) Course in Wheat Genetics at the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, UK. She was one of only 16 participants from all over the world selected to attend this course. We are grateful towards Grain South Africa’s Winter rainfall regions… Continue Reading

Bioinformatics with Burger

As a result of a partnership agreement between CenGen and DIPLOMICS, three staff members of CenGen along with Marizanne Horn (Sensako) received a week of intense onsite bioinformatics training from Mr Burger van Jaarsveld, bioinformatics field applications specialist at ThermoFisher Scientific. The participants were taught basic operations in writing scripts in Linux, MySQL and Python.… Continue Reading

Some more travelling, meeting and learning

From 23 to 26 September 2018, four CenGen members (Renée Prins, Corneli de Klerk, Kelly Breeds and Lizaan Rademeyer) along with Marizanne Horn (Sensako) attended the 15th International Cereal Rusts and Powdery Mildews Conference 2018 in Skukuza. The conference focused on these two diseases in barley and wheat and was attended by leading researchers in… Continue Reading