Marius du Plessis – Mondi Ltd

Marius manages the Tree Breeding and Technology department at Mondi Forests, South Africa, which aims at reducing plantation costs while improving the quality and value of the standing asset of the company.

Marius received a PhD (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) in Forestry (Wood Science) in 2012. His PhD research focused on closing the gap between forestry and pulp processing, in particular the development of quality pulpwood for the Kraft pulping process in which he developed an index to describe optimum management practices.

An experienced R&D Project Manager, with a demonstrated history of working in the forestry, pulp and paper industries, Marius is skilled in R&D Project Management, Nursery and Propagation, Tree Breeding, Seed Production, and Wood Quality. He also has global experience as the Department CEO R&D Sinarmas Forestry (Indonesia) between 2016-2018.

A regular external examiner of Masters dissertations for local universities, Marius has also moderated B.Tech Silviculture for NMU and acted as peer reviewer for Southern Forests Journal when required to do so.

Chris Foster – KFL: Environmental Practitioner: Highveld.

Chris is a trained forester, (silviculture and harvesting), with 30 years’ service and since 2004 Chris has been employed as an Environmental Practitioner (SHEQ department). Chris has also served on TIPWG for many years as the secretary.

As an environmental practitioner, Chris provides environmental services to Highveld plantations and companywide, compiling conservation management plans and monitoring compliance of operations to the Integrated Management System and FSC Principles and Criteria. Chris is responsible for identifying shortfalls in management systems and communicating all chemical-related issues to the company, as well as party auditing and arranging environmental monitoring programme. Chris also compiles the public summary of the Environmental Monitoring report.

Izette Greyling – Mondi Ltd.

Izette works as a Forest Health Specialist overseeing the IPM programme within Mondi. Before turning to the corporate world, she was the Field Extension Officer for the Tree Protection Cooperative Programme (TPCP) at FABI. She obtained an MSc in Microbiology at the University of Pretoria and it was through the work of her MSc that she became involved in tree health diagnostics, first working as part of the Diagnostic clinic team and later managing the clinic from 2006 – 2011.

Izette has been an author and co-author on several peer-reviewed publications, all in the area of pests and pathogens affecting tree health and their management.

Jacqui Meyer – TIPWG Coordinator

Jacqui has over 20 years experience in various roles in the forestry sector, including research, nursery, certification systems development, compliance, auditing and integrated pest management. She graduated with a Master’s from UKZN and has supervised and moderated various Honours and Masters dissertations.

Jacqui is now a consultant to the forestry industry and also the FSA: TIPWG Coordinator.

Craig Norris – NCT Forestry

Craig has been with NCT Forestry for 21 years and is currently the Manager of the Forestry Technology Department which looks after NCT’s Research and Development investment including their Tree Improvement Programme. Other services include mapping, planning and certification.

Craig’s areas of interest in the Forestry R&D space are Silviculture and Tree Improvement for diverse sites and markets. He has also taken a keen interest in developing certification systems that are appropriate for smaller-scale plantation operations.

Craig has assisted with peer reviews of numerous ICFR publications and writes regular articles for NCT publications.

Professor Jolanda Roux – Sappi

Jolanda is a pest and disease specialist, working for Sappi as a Programme Leader. Her main responsibilities include the management of pest and disease impacts for the company, monitoring and surveillance, diagnostics and participation in national pest and disease management activities in the South African forestry industry.

With a PhD in Microbiology, with an emphasis on plantation forest pathology, Jolanda also has over 20 years of experience working for Tree Protection Cooperative Programme (TPCP) at FABI as a tree health researcher and FSA funded extension pathologist. Her research focus is on the early detection, characterization, epidemiology and ecology of fungal pathogens, and their associated insects, on trees. During her time with TCPC she has trained multiple MSc and PhD students.

Jolanda has peer-reviewed articles for an extensive list of journals, including Annals of Forestry Science, Australasian Plant Pathology, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, Diversity and Distributions, Forest Ecology and Management, Forestry, Forest Pathology, Fungal Biology, Fungal Diversity, Ghana Forestry Journal, Journal of Tropical Forest Science, Mycologia, Plant Disease, Plant Pathology, PlosOne, South African Forestry Journal and Southern Forests. She also sits on the editorial boards of, Southern Forests (2018-present), An International Journal of Forest Research (2012-present), Forest Pathology (2007-present), Tropical Plant Pathology Journal (2012-2013) and South African Journal of Science (2008-2017).

Benice Sivparsad – ICFR

Benice is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Commercial Forestry Research (ICFR) specializing in Eucalyptus protection. She joined the ICFR in 2016 after working as a post-doc in Plant Pathology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where she also completed her PhD.

Benice’s expertise lies in plant virology (virus identification and characterisation), molecular biotechnology (transgenic virus resistance) as well as biological control. At the ICFR, she is working on developing integrated pest management strategies aimed at minimising risk to tree plantations. Her current project involves the use of exclusion plots to evaluate the impact of eucalypt canopy pests on growth and productivity.