Name: Loandi Richter
Department: Department of Plant and Soil Sciences
Faculty: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences
Position: PhD Student
E-mail: [email protected]
Biography Loandi Richter is a final year PhD candidate under Professor Lise Korsten, Dr. Erika Du Plessis, and Dr. Stacey Duvenage. Her current study focuses on fresh produce and irrigation water safety, including disseminating antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in the water-plant-food interface. She has attended various national and international conferences, where she shares and builds on her research. Ms. Richter was honored to be one of the recipients of the 2018 International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) Student Travel Scholarship award to attend the IAFP conference in Salt Lake City, USA, where she presented results from her study. She has also published in international peer-reviewed journals. She tutors scholars in life sciences outside of her work and plays timpani/percussion in various professional symphony orchestras. |
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Discipline/s Biotechnology |
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Research description Antimicrobial resistance has become a worldwide public health threat, with dissemination in clinical and agricultural settings. The water scarcity in South Africa forces farmers to use all available water resources, often without any treatment and questionable microbiological quality. The fact that human pathogens can survive on fresh produce for extended periods of time, coupled with the presence of an unacceptably high microbial load in irrigation water, represents a potential microbiological hazard that could pose a food safety risk. Potential human pathogens, such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli form part of the Enterobacteriaceae family, ubiquitous in humans, animals, and the environment. Surveillance and characterization of these multidrug-resistant bacteria isolated from the environment, therefore contribute towards the transdisciplinary approach for effective prevention and control of the global disease. The current study focuses on whole-genome sequencing of multidrug-resistant ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae and E. coli isolated from fresh produce in South Africa and irrigation water, completing the environmental and plant focuses within the One Health approach. |
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