Dr Rinus Knoetze

“I grew up in a small Karoo town called Klipplaat,” says Dr Rinus Knoetze. “It’s a farming community, and I was on farms almost more than I was at home.” His father was the postmaster, so Knoetze junior knew everyone in the area.

At school, Knoetze developed a love of biology, so he chose to study agriculture at Stellenbosch University, majoring in Entomology and Plant Pathology. “Nematology was limited to one semester,” he recalls. The course was taught by Prof. Albertus Meyer, who established nematology as a subject at the University.

After graduation and completing his military service, Knoetze joined the Directorate of Plant Health at the National Department of Agriculture in 1993. He was based at the quarantine station at Polkadraai.

“I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do there,” he says. “Then I realised I was a nematology technician.” This involved testing samples for import and export purposes. While there, he met Prof. Antoinette Malan, a fellow nematologist from Stellenbosch University. She inspired Knoetze to enrol for an MSc.

“My MSc was on molecular identification of nematodes, which was very new at that stage,” says Knoetze. He obtained his MSc in 1998 and embarked on a PhD studying potato cyst nematodes, a quarantine species recently found in South Africa.

He moved to the ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij in 2017. “There isn’t scope to do research when you work for the government,” he says. “That’s why I moved to the ARC.”

Knoetze has led several Hortgro-funded research projects, including surveying lesion nematodes in apple orchards, evaluating the host status of cover crops to lesion nematodes, and screening apple rootstocks for resistance to lesion nematodes.

When asked whether he’s surprised by how his career turned out, Knoetze nods. “I actually wanted to become an entomologist,” he says, “but nematology turned out to be a good fit for me.”