Ghaneshree Moonsamy has made history at Durban University of Technology by being the first candidate to have her Master’s degree upgraded to a Doctoral degree

Ghaneshree Moonsamy has made history at Durban University of Technology by being the first candidate to have her Master’s degree upgraded to a Doctoral degree. She still has a piece of work to complete before handing in her final doctoral research at the end of the year. Once all her submissions meet the examiners’ requirements, she can safely say the title of being called a doctor will be “in the bag”.

Moonsamy, from Brindhaven in Verulam (North of Durban), is currently on a Doctoral Studentship at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Biosciences (currently based in Johannesburg). In addition to completing the research for her doctoral study, she is involved in the development of various biological processes which include the use of algae for Biodiesel production. She has acquired scarce skills in the area of Bioprocess development, and she is also actively involved in the training of students. She is involved in researching innovative ideas, which will hopefully result in appropriate technologies and products that the ordinary South African can benefit from.

A thrilled Moonsamy said: When the idea of the upgrade came up, I didn’t realize that it hadn’t been successfully done at DUT. Now that the upgrade has been granted, I am more motivated to complete my doctoral study. Once I reach that milestone, I can then officially start the celebrations. Additionally, I guess I have also put my name down in the record books and history of DUT. I tend to be very motivated and hard on myself sometimes, and I think that this achievement will only become a reality once my final dissertation has been accepted. But from the reactions of others, I guess it really is a big deal, and I am absolutely chuffed.

Moonsamy’s research involved the development of a novel production process of a novel marine organism, which will be applied to abalone as a probiotic. Abalone, a seafood delicacy, is in great demand in China and other Far Eastern countries. This abalone, she says, is found to grow naturally on the West Coast of South Africa and can also be produced via means of aquaculture. She says the supply of abalone seldom meets the demand. She explains that this is usually as a result of illegal poaching, slow growth rate and poor resistance to disease and therefore, it is imperative to investigate means of increasing production of these animals and promote the aquaculture industry.

She says abalone takes approximately four years to reach a market appropriate size and it is thus a more lucrative product if one can make abalone grow faster. Her research partner has been involved in isolating micro-organisms from the gut of abalone to characterize them for a probiotic effect. She believes that the application of the probiotic organisms to abalone, would allow these marine creatures to digest food quickly and improve their resistance to disease, thus boosting overall growth of the animal. This work resulted in an internationally competitive concept technology that was patented.

Moonsamy did the segment of her Masters study under the supervision of Professor Suren Singh of DUT and Dr Raj Lalloo of the CSIR. Her aim was to develop a novel and commercially implementable upstream bioprocess technology for the production of this novel probiotic organism. Due to the limited information on the organism itself, says Moonsamy, fundamental understanding of the organism had to be discovered. She says many aspects of bioprocess development were investigated. The final aspect of her research (for the doctoral study) would be to demonstrate the technology development at a pilot scale, with the implementation of all the optimized parameters, determined from her Masters study and also develop a suitable down stream process which will result in a stable abalone probiotic product. In addition, she explains, the overall productivity and techno-economics of the process will also be determined.

She is convinced that this research will have a direct impact on the abalone farmers involved in the aquaculture of abalone in South Africa. She adds that this product will boost the overall growth rate and health of the animal and as a result increase the market share for export. “This increase in abalone production in SA will increase job creation and skills transfer to many unemployed South African citizens,” she says.

An achiever of note, Moonsamy graduated cum laude with a National diploma in 2006. She received the Dean’s award for academic excellence when she achieved the highest aggregate for cum laude in her class in 2006. She was placed first at the Work Integrated Learning programme (WIL) for her experiential training presentation held by the Department of Food and Biotechnology in 2006 and also published her first article in a peer reviewed journal in 2010.

She advises fellow upcoming researchers that conducting research is a long process, with lots of administration and approval frameworks involved. “Don’t let the time factor get you down, TRY and not let patience get the better of you, at the end of the journey, the taste of success will make the wait worth it,” she urged.

-By Bhekani Dlamini