On receiving her award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 National Research Foundation (NRF) Awards, Professor Jill Farrant, from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town, described her accolade as the biggest honour she has ever received from her country. “I have fought for this country. I have fought for equality in race and gender, and to have it recognised is really a great honour. I can’t go without acknowledging all my students, past and present and my collaborators globally and finally to the God of my understanding for showing me my path.”
Over the course of a distinguished career as a plant molecular physiologist, Prof Jill Farrant has combined scientific excellence with a deep commitment to capacity building, mentorship, and societal impact. Her life’s work, aimed at the improvement of drought tolerance in African crops, has redefined our understanding of this critical field and has contributed to food security in the face of climatic changes on a continent challenged by a future that will be hotter and drier. Throughout her research, she has used a multidisciplinary systems biology approach to fully understand the fundamental mechanisms and regulation of desiccation tolerance. Her work has led to a number of important discoveries that have led to breakthroughs such as the genetic modification of maize to improve its tolerance to moderate drought conditions. Her PhD involved understanding why certain seeds are sensitive to desiccation, precluding their storage for conservation purposes.
She went on to undertake research on unique and rare plants with the ability to tolerate extreme water loss/desiccation, sometimes for months or years, termed resurrection plants. Her later research looked at these resurrection plants and the synergies with root-associated microbes, producing natural biostimulants shown to improve drought tolerance and act as soil regeneration agents. This has led to a reduction in the reliance on chemical fertilisers in degraded soils.
Along the way, she introduced research on “orphan crops”, also sometimes called “forgotten crops”, which have not been bred during the green revolution for increased seed size and yield, the consequences of which were a severely reduced tolerance of water loss due to drought. Such crops are thus inherently more tolerant of drought but still die under severe drought conditions. Concentrating on orphan crops of true value to food security, namely legumes, the seeds being the richest source of plant protein, and teff, a gluten free and highly nutritious cereal seed, she has investigated their natural genetic mechanisms of tolerance with the aim of improving drought tolerance in green ways without implication to, if not improvement of, seed yield. She is currently working with the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture to develop molecular biomarkers for this trait in teff and further improve drought tolerance by integrating select genes identified from the resurrection grass and close relative of teff, Eragrostis nindensis.
Her research has also led to new discoveries in the field of cosmeceuticals, especially for the cosmetic and wound healing properties of the resurrection plant, Myrothamnus flabellifolia. In this regard, she has acted as scientific consultant in the private sector, notably for Giorgio Armani Skincare and L’Oreal Paris, and is collaborating with the University of Cape Town’s Skin and Hair Clinic for its use in wound healing. Her primary aim here is not only to facilitate South African products of use to the world, but to open a new avenue for subsistence farmers with barren rocky soil to produce a desirable and marketable product that will further boost the bioeconomy of South Africa. Her work has been featured in numerous documentaries, including the BBC’s The Genius Behind and PBS’s H2O the Molecule that Made Us and she has engaged in public outreach through numerous platforms which have included a TED Global Talk in 2015; BioVision in 2013; and the prestigious Falling Walls conference in Berlin. Prof Farrant has also appeared on a number of local television shows including 21 Icons South Africa, Expesso, I am Woman, Leap of Faith, and Carte Blanche.
Over the course of her career she has published more than 250 articles in appropriately placed visible and highly regarded journals as well as 18 book chapters. Prof Farrant has also served on the editorial and review boards of leading journals and has sat on the awards-granting committees of the Agropolis Foundation and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and served as Jury President of the L’Oreal-UNESCO sub-Saharan African, and South Africa Women in Science Fellowship Programme for nine years.
Prof Farrant completed her Honours, Master’s and PhD degrees at the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal) where she also worked as a research Fellow. She spent a short time as a postdoctoral researcher at the USDA-NSSL in Colorado, USA before moving to UCT to take up the post of lecturer. At UCT she is currently a full professor and holds the DSTI-NRF Research Chair in Systems Biology Studies on Plant Desiccation Tolerance for Food Security under the auspices of UCT’s Molecular and Cell Biology Department. She is the Chief Scientific Advisor for the Canadian Agtech company, Mother Wild Inc, which started up as a consequence of Farrant’s potential applications and who are helping to bring her applied research to market.
Her work has garnered widespread recognition, winning her numerous accolades which have included the 2008 SAAB Silver Medal for Excellence in Botany; the 2010 DSTI Distinguished Woman in Science Award; the 2010 Oppenheimer Foundation Premier Fellowship Award; the 2012 L’Oreal-UNESCO Award and Laureate of African and Arab States; the 2015 Erma Hamburger Award from the EPFL-WISH Foundation; and the 2022 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s coveted Georg Forster Research Award for a lifetime of excellence in a developing and transitioning country. She was the first female researcher from UCT to obtain an NRF A-rating and has subsequently maintained this rating two more times.
2025 NRF Awards honoured South Africa’s top researchers and scientists at a prestigious ceremony held on 07 August 2025 at the NH Johannesburg Sandton Hotel in Gauteng. This year’s event was held under the theme Innovating for a Sustainable Future, reflecting the NRF’s Vision 2030 of Research for a Better Society.
The annual NRF Awards recognise outstanding achievements made by individuals and teams whose excellence has significantly advanced science for the benefit of society. Their internationally competitive work is assessed for, among other things, the contribution to the field of study focusing on quality and impact. One of the objectives of the awards is to encourage the continued culture of advancing South Africa’s scientific knowledge and technological innovation by rewarding those who make use of research for the advancement and betterment of humanity.