Some of the LEGIM project team members - ltr Profs Mollel, Mashela and Fouche (University of Limpopo), Prof Kunert (UP), Dr Okole (CSIR), and Prof Foyer (Rothamsted Research in the UK).

Jointly funded by the Royal Society, UK and South Africa's National Research Foundation (NRF), the legume improvement project (LEGIM) is now moving into its second year. The project is aimed at contributing to the development of human resources in research areas of demand in South Africa such as plant molecular biology, plant transformation, plant physiology/ biochemistry and bioinformatics.

Structured such that all of its research activities involve young South African scientists - black scientists and post-graduate students in particular - the project is ensuring that breakthroughs are made by scientists that are at the beginning of their scientific careers, which opens up avenues for the growth of more projects along different paths.

The main South African role players in the LEGIM project are the SERA partners - the University of Pretoria (UP) and CSIR - as well as the University of Limpopo (UL). All three institutions interact closely with Rothamsted Research, which is the UK partner in the project. With Prof Karl Kunert of UP and Prof Christine Foyer at Rothamsted Research as the two project leaders and Dr Blessed Okole at the CSIR the co-project leader, the main functions of this project team are to set the pace and direction of research, to identify and select new participants, who will bring value to the project, and to promote the project at conferences via publications and searching for additional funding opportunities.

Over the project's first year, highlights to date have included obtaining two scarce skills bursaries for MSc students, one SA Innovational post-doctoral fellowship, a Royal Society/NRF post-doctoral fellowship (Ms Christina Mathabe) and one German DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or German Research Foundation) post-doctoral fellowship (Dr Urte Schlueter). Small research teams headed by younger lecturers or research scientists have also been established at each of the three participating South African institutions, and a biotechnology lab has been in operation since the end of 2005 under the supervision of Prof Ignatious Ncube at UL.

In addition, two scientific papers in Journal Experimental Botany have been published together with Rothamsted Research as a first result of the interaction, with further presentations on the project and its achievements made at various conferences, including the Royal Agriculture Show in the UK, the SA Day at the Royal Society in London, and the SEB (Society for Experimental Biology) conference in Barcelona, Spain. Further highlights took the form of two visits to South Africa by Prof Christine Foyer and a current 8-month sabbatical at UP and UL by Prof Chris Cullis - the associate project member from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA.

The primary scientific aim of the LEGIM project has been to determine the processes responsible for the premature senescence in soybean nodules induced by abiotic and biotic stresses with the goal to identify and characterize senescence-related genes in soybean nodules under optimal and stress conditions. The project comprises three interactive scientific areas - namely, gene discovery in legume nodules, characterization of the nodular proteinase/ proteinase inhibitor system, and nodule transformation - the second of these being the primary focus of the UP component of the project team.

The CSIR has been focusing on investigating protein expression using proteomics tools, UL on nodule transformation and marker development for delayed senescence, while Rothamsted Research provides expertise in nodule and plant phenotyping including biochemical and physiological characterization of senescent nodules. Rothamsted Research further provides training and scientific back-stopping for all South African groups involved in the project.

Lecturers and MSc students from UL have been trained at UP in soybean transformation and basic molecular biology work, while SA lecturers - including one from Wits University (Dr Ndiko Ludidi) and one from North West University (Dr Riekert van Heerden) - and one PhD student from UP were trained at Rothamsted Research by Prof Christine Foyer and Dr Guy Kiddle in transcriptome analysis and plant phenotyping.

Collaboration within LEGIM has been widespread, with the project also involving associated groups from South Africa (Dr Christell van der Vyver, Stellenbosch University) and the UK as well as from the US and Canada. Further synergistic activities resulting from interactions occurring within the project focused on supporting NRF applications by UL lecturers and the successful application for Generation Challenge Program travel grants for two African faculty (Namibia and Sudan) to work with Professors Cullis and Kunert at UP. Successful applications to other funding agencies, such as RAEIN and Rockefeller Foundation, for plant biotechnology projects have also been made based on the LEGIM project.

According to Prof Karl Kunert, who is also a contributor to the African Centre for Gene Technologies (ACGT - a SERA platform), working with such associated research groups will be vital in order to obtain expertise not currently available in the project and to maximize the training efforts.

The first year of the project has produced significant success in terms of execution of the various capacity building activities that were planned for this period. These include the training of black scientists in basic and advanced molecular biology, legume transformation, phenotyping of senescent plants and characterization of the proteinase/ proteinase inhibitor system in legumes. Practical courses involving basic molecular techniques have also been introduced at UL and planning for their inclusion into the University's core-curriculum is under way.

Following the success of the first year of the project, several activities have been planned for the second year to promote the interaction of SA and UK scientists. These include several short and long term working visits of African scientists to the UK and visits of UK scientists to SA including a visit of Prof Nick Brewin of the John Innes Centre in Norwich to the SA project members. This year there will also be a '5+5' meeting in Pretoria organized by Dr Rachel Chikwamba from CSIR/UP and Dr Anne Edwards from the John Innes Centre. In this workshop five younger UK research scientists from different institutions will discuss future research collaboration and grant applications with five SA research scientists located at different academic institutions.

The way forward will also include support in restructuring the curriculum for Biotechnology at UL as well as support for the University's application for an institutional research fund. This will form part of the first step in creating a centre for Stress Biology at UL in partnership with UP and the CSIR.

All activities within the project will be included into a project video for which a small European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) grant has been secured.

For more information, please visit the LEGIM project website.