Dr Noëlani van den Berg

Department of Genetics

[email protected]

Fruit Tree Stress and Pathogen Responses 

Noëlani van den Berg obtained her PhD (Plant Pathology) in 2006 from the University of Pretoria with a NRF PhD Prestige Bursary and a Mellon Foundation scholarship.  She was awarded a Claude Leon Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue research on identifying plant resistance genes.

In 2008 she was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Genetics at UP and is the research leader of the Fruit Tree Biotechnology Programme (FTBP) under the auspices of the Hans Merensky Foundation. 

She has published 12 scientific papers and received a NRF Y2-rating in 2011.
 

IRT-related research projects 

Noelani van den Berg is the Principal Investigator of the FTBP and hosts two PhD and eight MSc students working on projects on the avocado/Phytophthora cinnamomi interaction. These projects are in the general fields of plant pathology, molecular plant and pathogen genetics and transcriptomics. Projects include sequencing the tolerant avocado defence-related transcriptome and elucidating the genotypic responses of avocado to oxygen-limiting conditions and the synergism with Phytophthora root rot. 

Key Publications 

Mahomed, W, Van den Berg, N (2011). EST sequencing and gene expression profiling of defence-related genes from Persea americana infected with Phytophthora cinnamomi. BMC Plant Biol. 11: 167 

Van den Berg, N, Berger, DK, Hein, I, Birch PRJ, Wingfield, MJ, Viljoen, A (2007) Tolerance in banana to Fusarium wilt is associated with early up-regulation of cell wall-strengthening genes in the roots. Molec Plant Pathol. 8: 333-341 

Van den Berg, N, Crampton, B, Hein, I, Birch, PRJ, Berger, DK (2004) High throughput screening of SSH cDNA libraries using DNA microarray analysis. BioTechniques 37: 818-824