Applied research focusses on diseases that cause significant economic impacts on poultry health and production in South Africa. These diseases include, but are not limited to, avian influenza, Newcastle disease, infectious bronchitis virus and mycoplasmosis. Cutting-edge technologies such as next generation sequencing  is applied to deliver fresh insights into the nature of mixed pathogen infections, sub-genomic populations (quasispecies) and rapid full genome sequencing and analysis. Improving and developing new diagnostic tests (pathogen as well as specific antibody detection) for these and other diseases, in vivo pathogenicity and clinical vaccine trials and reviving a poultry antigen bank are key goals. The recently-upgraded Poultry Biosafety Level 3 laboratory is expected to enable a level of poultry research at the Faculty that has not previously been possible in South Africa.

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