Zenzile Peter Khetsha

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• Doctor Technologiae Agriculture
• Senior Lecturer at Central University of Technology

Globally, compliance with the chemical regulations on the use of herbicides, particularly glyphosate, remains a challenge. Glyphosate controls various broadleaf, annual, and perennial grasses in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. Although glyphosate targets weeds, it can also influence non-target soil microorganisms and high-value plant...

This review examines the critical importance of ethical values for future leaders in South African higher learning institutions, focusing on academic jealousy. Higher Education (HE) institutions play a pivotal role in shaping society; therefore, future leaders need a strong ethical foundation to navigate academic complexities. Academic jealousy, ch...

This review examines the critical importance of ethical values for future leaders in South African higher learning institutions, focusing on academic jealousy. Higher Education (HE) institutions play a pivotal role in shaping society; therefore, future leaders need a strong ethical foundation to navigate academic complexities. Academic jealousy, ch...

Plants are subjected to severe abiotic and biotic stresses worldwide. Global warming and climate change are increasing water scarcity and water-saving strategies, especially in coastal agricultural lands and arid and semi-arid regions, including South Africa. A wide range of horticultural crops encounter single or combined environmental stresses su...

Environmental stress factors such as climate change, wounding because of severe pruning, hail damage, and natural pests, as well as soil and water quality, remain the most important determinants of the success of agricultural productivity, especially in tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) in South Africa. Therefore, the effects of climate change on...

Adverse environmental stressors such as moisture deficit, soil acidity, and nutrient deficiency, particularly phosphorus (P) due to climate change as single and combined multi-stress, are gradually threatening food security globally. Therefore, modern agriculture faces pressing challenges where novel strategies must be developed for sustainable foo...

Leafy vegetables are a highly variable group of perishable food that broadly can be defined as vegetables grown for their edible leaves. This study was conducted to investigate the safety of commodities grown at farms and those sold in various retails globally, cascading to South Africa, and to determine the identification and characterization of t...

This research study aimed to review the approaches to teaching and assessing diverse multidisciplinary agriculture curricula at the University of Technology (UoTs). Teaching academically diverse learners from broad educational secondary schools such as pure agricultural science, commerce, and engineering secondary schools' results in bottlenecks du...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the major produced crop in South Africa, but numerous abiotic/bi-otic stressors threaten its production. Herbicides are mainly in the agricultural sector to minimise crop yield losses caused by weed competition. However, with most weeds becoming resistant to glyphosate, South African farmers have used higher herbicide concent...

Previous studies have demonstrated that exogenous application of phytohormone-based biostimulants and subjecting aromatic plants to environmental stresses improves the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. This experiment was laidout in a 5×2 factorial design, arranged in a randomised complete block design, and replicated three times to determine...

KEYWORDS chickpea reduced irrigation plant biomass water scarcity COPYRIGHT © The Author(s) Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0) Irrigation is required to supplement rainfall to enhance the productivity of chickpea in South Africa (SA). However, the dependence on irrigation can be problematic for SA a...

Agricultural production has long been a cornerstone of livelihoods in rural areas, providing essential resources and economic stability to communities worldwide. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the role of agriculture as a sustainable livelihood strategy for youth in these regions, especially in Africa, where the youth make up m...

Extreme abiotic stress factors such as hail, defoliation, salinity, and moisture stress can affect the biosynthesis of essential oils. To mitigate this, most commercial farmers globally use agricultural crop insurance; however, this is not the case for most smallholder and emerging farmers in southern Africa, as agricultural insurance tends to be e...

The phyllosphere hosts a considerable number of microorganisms, providing a vast habitat for naturally associated phyllobacteria due to its topography as it offers various colonization and infiltration sites. Contamination of vegetables may occur through pre-harvest and post-harvest activities and include cross-contamination from infected personnel...

Chitinases, enzymes that degrade chitin, have long been studied for their role in various biological processes. They play crucial roles in the moulting process of invertebrates, the digestion of chitinous food, and defense against chitin-bearing pathogens. Additionally, chitinases are involved in physiological functions in crustaceans, such as chit...

Moral theories play an important role in the shape of healthcare institutions and health practitioners. Under the recently described VUCA world, the health science discipline has been confronted with ethical dilemmas and work burdens due to the socio-cultural politics globally, and this has been reported widely in South Africa due to the population...

Worldwide, it has been recorded extensively that plants are subjected to severe abiotic and biotic stressors. The scientific research community has widely reported that multi-abiotic stressors cause horticultural crop losses, accounting for at least 50 to 70% of the crop yield and quality losses. Therefore, this review focused on the detrimental ef...

Plants get exposed to multiple stresses throughout their phenological growth stages. At most, these stresses are attributed to single or combined stresses like salinity, water deficits, wounding, mineral deficiencies, potting bag size, soil/root media density and type, soil pH, and the type of production system employed. Multistress factors have be...

Cyanobacteria harmful algal blooms (cHABs) are increasingly becoming an emerging threat to aquatic life, ecotourism, and certain real estate investments. Their spontaneous yet sporadic occurrence has made mitigation measures a cumbersome task; moreover, current trends regarding anthropogenic activities, especially in agriculture and industry porten...

This study aimed to determine the application methods of brassinosteroids (BR) as an alternative production system to improve plant growth and morpho-physiological characteristics of dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), soya bean (Glycine max (L.)), and groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.). Trials were laid out in a complete randomized block design, arrang...

Since 2017, resistance by the agricultural industry to accept the placement of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) students from the Central Uni- versity of Technology, Free State (CUT) was observed in the Department of Ag- riculture. With the general monitoring, and feedback from farmers between 2018 and 2021, they explicitly stated to a greater extent...

Sulphate (SO4) abundance in the earth’s crust contributes largely to industrial wastewater contamination lowering the pH, which exuberates the dissolution of metals forming acidic drainages. Biological sulphate reduction as a remediation process can be affected by factors such as pH, temperature and high sulphide concentrations. In this study, sulp...

Nitrate contamination in water remains to be on the rise globally due to continuous anthropogenic activities, such as mining and farming, which utilize high amounts of ammonium nitrate explosives and chemical-NPK-fertilizers, respectively. This study presents insights into the development of a bioremediation strategy to remove nitrates (NO3 ⁻) usin...

The economic important value of wool in South Africa is influenced by many characteristics that meet processor capacities and consumers' preference. The study was conducted to characterize the trends of annual Merino sheep numbers, wool sales and wool auction price in South Africa, from 1980 to 2017. The data from year 1980 to 2017 was retrieved fr...

The quest for circular bioeconomy has been on the rise in recent years, and it is anticipated to fulfil the environmental sustainability aspect of the sustainable development goals (SDG 2030). In this regard, our investigation attempted the biotechnological appraisal of an enzymatic derivative of bacterial (Pseudomonas sp. HRJ16) mandarin peelings...

The economic important value of wool in South Africa is influenced by many characteristics that meet processor capacities and consumers' preference. The study was conducted to characterize the trends of annual Merino sheep numbers, wool sales and wool auction price in South Africa, from 1980 to 2017. The data from year 1980 to 2017 was retrieved fr...

Hailstorms cause significant yield and financial losses to the agricultural sector. There are reports that hail can cause severe damage to rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens spp.) plants. There are currently no mechanisms to alleviate hail-damaged essential oil plants, such as rose geranium. This study aims to develop a strategy for hail damage,...

The aim of this study was to determine the ability of exogenous applications of biostimulants to improve the leaf micromorphology, and the essential oil yield in rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L’Hér.) exposed to simulated hail damage. The experiment was carried in a 3 x 4 factorial treatment design, laid out in a randomised complete block de...

Freshwater is a scarce resource that continues to be at high risk of pollution from anthropogenic activities, requiring remediation in such cases for its continuous use. The agricultural and mining industries extensively use water and nitrogen (N)-dependent products, mainly in fertilizers and explosives, respectively, with their excess accumulating...

Hail can cause significant damage to aromatic and medicinal plants; however, this has never been investigated scientifically on most of aromatic and medicinal plants. Globally, essential oil crop producers primarily make use of agricultural crop insur- ance and costly mitigation strategies to recover lost production costs and alleviate hail-damaged...

Hail can cause significant damage to aromatic and medicinal plants; however, this has never been investigated scientifically on most of aromatic and medicinal plants. Globally, essential oil crop producers primarily make use of agricultural crop insurance and costly mitigation strategies to recover lost production costs and alleviate hail-damaged p...

Potassium (K) is an essential nutrient in plant metabolism, ionic balance, and stress resistance. In this study, the effects of K on agronomic attributes and on mineral and primary metabolite content in African potato were determined. K was administered hydroponically at four concentrations (4.00, 6.00, 8.00, and 10.00 meq·L ⁻¹ ) using Steiner’s un...

This study evaluated the level of selected pesticide residues in the staple vegetables; Brassica oleracea var. capitata (cabbage), Beta vulgaris var. cicla (Swiss chard), and Solanum tuberosum (potato) from fresh produce markets in the city of Bloemfontein, South Africa. A QuEChERS extraction method was used followed by quantitation using GC‐HRT/MS...

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of plant growth regulators (PGRs) on the leaf mineral status, and the phenolic compounds of rose geranium with stimulated hail damage. This experiment was conducted in a 3 x 4 factorial treatment design laid out in a randomized complete block design. The interaction between simulated hail damage and PGRs sig...

The density and morphology of glandular trichomes in rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L’Her.) are often correlated to the essential oil biosynthesis. However, whether the different organs in the same rose geranium plant are affected by hail damage, or if they recover similarly following hail damage is still unknown concerning the essential oil...

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of plant growth regulators (PGRs) on the leaf mineral status, and the phenolic compounds of rose geranium with stimulated hail damage. This experiment was conducted in a 3 x 4 factorial treatment design laid out in a randomized complete block design. The interaction between simulated hail damage and PGRs sig...

The density and morphology of glandular trichomes in rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L’Her.) are often correlated to the essential oil biosynthesis. However, whether the different organs in the same rose geranium plant are affected by hail damage, or if they recover similarly following hail damage is still unknown concerning the essential oil...

An annual global crop yield loss due to natural hazards and disaster is currently significantly affecting emerging farmers. Hail produced by hailstorm has been identified as one of the natural hazards that causes yield loss in crops. The level of hail damage varies across plant species depending on stages of development, plant height, the leaf and...

Development of hail mitigating strategy for hail damaged aromatic and medicinal plants

This research study aims to review the approaches to teaching diverse multidisciplinary agricultural disciplines and conduct comprehensive research on contextualization of agricultural disciplines at the university of technologies (UoTs). Teaching academically diverse learners from broad educational secondary schools such as the pure agricultural;...

This study aims to identify challenges in student-teacher preparedness to pedagogical application and what could lead to teaching difficulties amongst students who are former students of Agricultural Management Diploma and B. Tech programme at Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT). Agricultural Management programme receives students fr...

For an average African postgraduate student in the untransformed Higher Education society postgraduate studies become a dilemma. Majority of registered African students seem to either take quite a long time to complete their studies or even do not complete at all. The needs and capabilities of the African students in Higher Education system are inf...

This study establishes the impact of realigning teaching perspectives to encourage deep-learning approach of students in the diverse discipline of Agricultural Management. Agricultural Management 1 (AMN11AT) is one of the three main subject at a first year level in the Diploma Agricultural Management programme, CUT, FS. It is categorised under hard...

Introduction: Essential oils possess antimicrobial properties as a result they can be used as bio-preservatives and to control crop contamination thereby ensuring food safety. Contamination of food products by fungi affects shelf life, influences food safety negatively and frequently results in qualitative and quantitative losses of food commoditie...

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of four concentrations of potassium (K; 1.3, 3.3, 5.3 and 7.3 mmol L−1) and two potting-bag sizes (5 and 10 L) on foliar biomass and related attributes and oil composition of rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens). Plants were grown in a climate-controlled greenhouse at the University of the Free Stat...

INTRODUCTION Rose geranium oil is produced commercially worldwide for use in perfumery, medicinal and aromatherapy industries. Leaves, flowers and branches are important parts of the plant because this is where most of the trichomes are found. The yield of rose geranium is affected by mineral composition and environmental factors such as sodium ch...

The main objective of the study was to determine the effect of different potassium concentrations and water quality (salt) compared with the current scientifically accepted potassium threshold level and standardised water quality on the yield, oil composition and leaf morphology of rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L.) when grown in different p...

This study was conducted at the University of the Free State to evaluate the effect of potassium (K) (1.3, 3.3, 5.3 and 7.3 mmol L-1) and potting-bag size (5 and 10 L) on the yield and oil composition of rose geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L.). Plants were grown under a climate controlled plant-house and treatments were arranged in a randomized c...

Salinity is an environmental condition that induces stress on plants especially under high soil salts levels. It limits crop metabolic activities, hampers plant growth and synthesis of secondary metabolites. It also affects osmotic potential in the plant root zone. A complete randomized block design was used to evaluate the effect of salinity appli...