Prof Khoboso Lehloenya is an Associate Professor and an acting HOD for the Department of Agriculture, University of Zululand. Her father like any rural man owned few cattle and she used to milk the cows as her father was working at the mines and not always home. The whole experience stimulated her love for the animals and she therefore decided to study Agriculture.
Currently Prof lectures various physiology and animal science subjects as well as supervising postgraduate students under the same fields. As a reproduction physiologist, she has been focusing on reproduction physiology and utilisation of assisted reproduction technologies in farm animals to speed up the genetic progress and conservation of valuable genetic material. Currently, her research focus is on understanding how specific nutrients (antioxidants) and molecular biology can improve livestock production following the use of assisted reproductive technologies such as oestrous synchronisation, artificial insemination, in vitro embryo production and gametes cryopreservation. In 2016, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Florida, USA where she undertook a research to understand how embryokines modulate embryo development.
At the beginning of her career, she received NRF (Thuthuka) funding to pursue research and obtained a PhD in Animal science. She also received funding for collaborated projects with local and international scientists under NRF South Africa/Italy collaboration and DAFF. Prof Lehloenya has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and conference papers / abstracts presented at local and international conferences. Due to her international recognition, she was invited to give a talk in a workshop of the 2011 European Embryo Transfer Association conference in Chester, England on multiple ovulation and embryo transfer in South Africa.
She served as a council member of the South African Society for Animal Science (2011-2015) and is an associate editor for Small Ruminant Research Journal. She also serves as a sub-editor for South African Journal of Animal Science and reviewer of a number of local and international journals in animal science, reproduction and theriogenology.
Her career has been highlighted by receiving awards locally including the Honorary Award for Community Service at the University of the Free State in 2007, the Junior Researcher and Emerging Female Researcher Awards from Tshwane University of Technology in 2010 and 2012. She also received a runner-up award for Distinguished Young Women Scientists: Physical and Engineering Sciences at South African Women in Science Awards 2012.