RefShare: A Community of Practice to Enhance Research Collaboration

The Phytomedicine Programme of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa [1]. The programme investigates problems in the wide area of infections, especially microbial and parasitic infections in the process of training postgraduate students. They co-operate with many specialists in other areas in the application of extracts and isolated compounds to improve the health and productivity of plants, animals and humans. The approach is multidisciplinary and students and collaborators come from diverse fields such as biochemistry, botany, chemistry, microbiology, parasitology, pharmacy, pharmacology, physiology, plant pathology, plant production, veterinary sciences and zoology. The phytomedicine laboratory expertise is in extraction, bioassay and isolation of bioactive compounds from plants.