The AF4RICA Lab is operated via a partnership agreement between Enterprises University of Pretoria and Life AgriScience. The joint skills set of these two entities ensures a unique value proposition for our clients and the market in general.
Enterprises UP ensures that the Lab’s outputs are scientifically sound whilst Life AgriScience’s integrated laboratory management process/approach ensures professionalism across sample management, analytical work and client service and engagement.
AF4RICA Lab focusses on analysing all the natural resources (soil, water and vegetation) that drives agroecosystem functions. Our current clients include mining companies i.e Seriti, Thungela, Anglo American, Glencore, South 32, Valterra, De Beers; and livestock farmers and agricultural research organisations and Universities i.e ARC, CSIR, UNISA, UP, UKZN, NWU and we expect to grow the Labs’s service offering to include all carbon and nutrient analyses of plants and soils.
Despite the Lab being equipped with state-of-the-art technology to ensure quick turnaround time it still has the scalability to conduct unique field sampling and processing.
The Lab is well resourced and has a Laboratory manager and various lab technicians, in-house Soil, Pasture, Agronomy, Land Rehabilitation and Environmental Specialists.
Meet the team
Prof Wayne Truter
Founder and Specialist Advisor
Prof Truter is the visionary, whose leadership brought Af4rica Lab into existence. His professional experience entails land (Degraded or mined agricultural land) regeneration planning and management, with particular emphasis on understanding the interrelationships of the soil, grasses, legumes, water and livestock and game. His specialization focuses on establishing the most sustainable, economical and practically feasible regenerative land use management system in disturbed environments. This includes forage and pasture management as an important component of a fodder flow programme. Since forage and pasture are integral to understanding these processes, it only makes sense that it has to be qualified thoroughly. This led to the birth of Af4rica Lab.
Makda Mahrai
Lab manager
Makda greatly benefits the team as Lab Manager, overseeing all procedures in the wet lab and the NIRS lab. She has years of industry experience, quantifying analytes in biological material, in order to determine the quality thereof. Her precision and care for analytical procedures are imperative for precise and accurate results.
Bella Beukes
Lab Administrator
Bella's crucial role as lab administrator helps Af4rica Lab function smoothly. It is clear that her managerial skills in the accounts and logistical departments are equally as important to her, as her role as client liaison.
Elrica de Necker
Soil / Agronomy Specialist
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Gelene Beukes
Lab Technician
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