Spanning the Globe

Visit to Pannar Seed

Friday morning we drove the perilous sugar cane truck route from Hilton to Greytown, home of Pannar Seed, a South African company that has become an international company in recent years. We suffered our first casualty of the trip: after lying in the back seat all the way to Greytown, Robyn finally threw up upon arrival at Pannar and spent the rest of the day in the Pannar medical clinic, recovering from what appeared to be food poisoning.

Unfortunately, she missed excellent presentations by some of the Pannar plant pathologists, agronomists and breeders in the morning and field visits in the afternoon. Luckily, she felt well enough to travel to our next stop in the evening.

In the morning, we received an overview of the company by Peet van der Walt, followed by presentations by maize breeder, Rikus Kloppers, agronomist, Eve du Preez, soybean breeder, Antony Jarvie and, of course, a delightful tea break, which included a choice of petit-fours and muffins. From Rikus Kloppers, we learned about the many diseases of maize that are a problem in this country, including Phaeosphaeria leaf spot, which seems to be a problem only in fields that have been sprayed with fungicides to control other diseases. We also learned more about maize streak virus, a leafhopper-transmitted viral disease that is severely yield-limiting, and about the new GM-maize streak resistant variety developed at Pannar that shows promise for controlling this severely yield-limiting disease.

Eve du Preez gave us a detailed review of results from field trials she had done on fungicide efficacy, rate of application, persistence, and timing of applications for control of soybean rust. Antony Jarvie talked about his work to define and identify rust-tolerance in soybean cultivars, and explained that a combination of tolerance and fungicide applications will likely be the most effective means of managing this disease for the foreseeable future.

A typical Afrikaner-style lunch that included mutton and pumpkin fritters was catered in the company canteen before we drove out to the field plots on the afternoon. In the field we saw soybean sentinel plots severely defoliated by Asian soybean rust and gained more expertise in recognizing symptoms of this disease. We also visited maize breeding plots with plants exhibiting varying levels of maize streak virus. Employees were in the process of pollinating plants while we were in the field, so we also got a chance to see maize breeding in action. At the end of the day we said farewell to our friendly, informative hosts and headed to our next stop: a quaint hotel with a thatched roof in Winterton.

1. My poor, poor Robyn! I'm sure the exotic cuisine is a shock to the system (good or bad). It seems that you are all learning some great, once in a lifetime lessons and I can't wait to hear more about what's been discovered.
   Posted by  on  03/12  at  10:03 AM
2. Well baby duck, I'm sorry you don't have the taste for all the international cuisine. I knew I should have given you a packet of my tummie home remedies to take, but they might not have made it through customs. Please be safe and eat carefully!
   Posted by  on  03/12  at  01:51 PM
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