Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
The Faculty of Agriculture at Natal University
51 years ago
This article explored the important research done by the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Twenty-one years ago, the Faculty of Agriculture in Pietermaritzburg came into being under an agreement between the University of Natal and the Department of Agriculture. At the start of 1947, Dr AR Saunders, famous South African plant breeder and agronomist, arrived in Natal to organise and initiate the development of the new training centre.
When lectures started in 1948, there was a teaching establishment of nine. Saunders was Dean as well as being Professor of Genetics and Head of the Department of Agronomy. The academic staff has grown to 45, of whom 14 are professors. Five of the foundation members are still on the staff.
The faculty has produced about 700 graduates with a primary degree of BSc Agriculture. About 100 of these stayed on for postgraduate study and qualified with master’s degrees or doctorates.
As the only English-medium faculty of agriculture in the Republic, it has a vital role to fulfill. It has also drawn a large number of students from Rhodesia, Zambia, Tanzania and elsewhere, and more than a quarter of its graduates are employed north of the Limpopo.
A third of the graduates are employed as agricultural scientists by government agencies, especially the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. Fifteen percent are farming, 14% are in commerce and 8% are teaching agricultural sciences at agricultural college and university level.
The faculty’s research programme has benefited the farming community and the people of South Africa as a whole. The Department of Pasture Science, headed by Prof JD Scott, has made a tremendous contribution to both the theory and practice of proper land use, farm planning and the combating of the ultimate evil, soil erosion. Students in this department have planned well over 100 farms.
The department has also contributed to the study of ecology and management of veld, including veld burning and the selection, management and use of cultivated pasture species.
The Department of Horticultural Science has made good progress in the selection of fruit varieties adapted to Natal conditions. These include avocados that mature their fruit in the period of summer scarcity; a midseason orange with the characteristics of the pineapple orange but with very few seeds; and pecan nuts with disease resistance and highyielding varieties with large nut size.
The Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology has studied plant diseases of many different types, ranging from maize leaf blight to the viruses causing spotted wilt in tomatoes.
The Department of Entomology has covered a wide field of study in its researches. It has investigated several pest problems, including the hibiscus borer, the citrus snout beetle, and the biological control of Lantana. The department is also engaged in a study of cheese manufacture and the evaluation of factors involved in cheese ripening and the development of specific cheese flavour.
The Department of Animal Science is well known for its work on the reproductive physiology of sheep, which has yielded much useful information on the improvement of lambing percentages. Possibly the most famous piece of research was the importation of fertilised sheep ova from England in the reproductive tract of a rabbit, which served as a living incubator for the ova while in transit. They were placed in the uterus of a foster mother ewe at Ukulinga and the twin lambs subsequently born became known as Romulus and Remus.