Prof. Karen Theron, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Karen Theron has been associated with Stellenbosch University, starting as a lecturer, since 1985 and later became Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Horticultural Science. She is currently the first incumbent in the HORTGRO Chair in Applied Pre-harvest Deciduous Fruit Research at the Dept. of Horticultural Science, Stellenbosch University. As the name implies she busies herself in more applied aspects of deciduous fruit production and enjoys doing research on plant growth regulators, fruit quality improvement etc. She is however also still active in undergraduate teaching and post graduate supervision and has published 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and graduated 74 Masters- and 10 PhD-students.