Staff profile

Tatenda is a Royal Society Newton International Fellow in Steve Chivasa’s Lab in the Department of Biosciences. He completed his PhD in South Africa at the University of the Free State under Dr Rudo Ngara’s supervision. His PhD work evaluated sorghum physiological and molecular adaptive responses to drought stress. He began his academic career as a Lecturer at Gwanda State University, where he also served as a departmental chairperson before moving to Bindura University of Science Education. His research career began when he was awarded the Royal Society Newton International Fellowship in 2022 to work in Dr Chivasa's Lab as a Post-Doctoral researcher at Durham University. His Post-Doctoral Fellowship focuses on understanding interactions between sorghum and the soil microbiome during normal growth and metabolic transition to survive drought. This utilises diverse analytical techniques, including in situ imaging of roots, iTRAQ analysis, Next Generation Sequencing, and Metabolomics.

Research interestsPlant root-microbe interactionsMolecular genetic basis for plant responses to drought

Journal Article

• Muthego, D., Moloi, S. J., Brown, A. P., Goche, T., Chivasa, S., & Ngara, R. (2023). Exogenous abscisic acid treatment regulates protein secretion in sorghum cell suspension cultures. Plant Signaling & Behavior, 18(1), Article 2291618. https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2023.2291618
• Ngara, R., Goche, T., Swanevelder, D. Z. H., & Chivasa, S. (2021). Sorghum’s Whole-Plant Transcriptome and Proteome Responses to Drought Stress: A Review. Life, 11(7), Article 704. https://doi.org/10.3390/life11070704
• Ngcala, M. G., Goche, T., Brown, A. P., Chivasa, S., & Ngara, R. (2020). Heat Stress Triggers Differential Protein Accumulation in the Extracellular Matrix of Sorghum Cell Suspension Cultures. Proteomes, 8(4), Article 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/proteomes8040029
• Tibugari, H., Mafere, G., Dube, S., Chakavarika, M., Mandumbu, R., Musara, J. P., …Mpofu, N. (2020). Worrying cadmium and lead levels in a commonly cultivated vegetable irrigated with river water in Zimbabwe. Cogent Biology, 6(1), Article 1802814. https://doi.org/10.1080/23312025.2020.1802814
• Goche, T., Shargie, N. G., Cummins, I., Brown, A. P., Chivasa, S., & Ngara, R. (2020). Comparative physiological and root proteome analyses of two sorghum varieties responding to water limitation. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 11835. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68735-3
• Ramulifho, E., Goche, T., Van As, J., Tsilo, T. J., Chivasa, S., & Ngara, R. (2019). Establishment and Characterization of Callus and Cell Suspension Cultures of Selected Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench Varieties: A Resource for Gene Discovery in Plant Stress Biology. Agronomy, 9(5), Article 218. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy9050218