We would like to share the Annual Report for the Centre for Biological Control for 2023. It was another very busy and productive year for the CBC.
Please enjoy reading the annual report, we look forward to hearing your feedback or answering any questions you may have.
From the Director's Report: "There were some really significant events during 2023. Professor Iain Paterson was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award at the April graduation at Rhodes. In May the CBC was very well represented at the 16th International Symposium for the Biological Control of Weeds in Iguazu, Argentina. Well done to our colleagues at FuEDEI for hosting such a great conference. We managed to get the Vice Chancellor of Rhodes University, Dr Sizwe Mabizela to make the first release of the stem-boring weevil, Listronotus appendiculatus against Sagittaria platyphylla in the Botanical Gardens in Makhanda. Dave Kinsler played a significant role, along with our colleagues from Louisiana State University in plotting the decline of Salvinia molesta on Lake Ossa in Cameroon, which threatened the largest population of the African Manatee. It is these sorts of results that we need to convince the conservationists of the impact of biological control. 2023 marked the first sales of the novel nuclear polyhedrosis virus, formulated into the products Multimax and Codlmax by our industry partner River BioScience (RB). This commercialization, initially in South Africa, but soon to be worldwide, was the culmination of 10 years of research along with RB and CRI. Well done to Michael Jukes and Tamryn Marsberg for asking the question “Why?” when things didn’t work out as expected. I would like to congratulate Professor Julie Coetzee on being awarded a prestigious Tier 1 SARChI in the ecology of freshwater invasive species and their control, which is a joint chair between Rhodes University and SAIAB. To put this into perspective, there are only 240 SARChIs in South Africa, with less than half being Tier 1. Julie is in the process of having laboratories refurbished at an NRF facility in Observatory, Johannesburg, which will become the focal area for her research and another node of the CBC. "