News

During the first weeks of September, the storm ‘Daniel’ swept through most of Greece causing heavy rainfall and severe flooding, affecting mostly central Greece and the area of Thessaly. By closely monitoring the situation and respecting the affected local communities as well as the disruption of national roads and rail networks, due to the flooding, the MIKROBIOKOSMOS organising committee has announced that the 10th International Conference of Mikrobiokosmos will be rescheduled due to the current circumstances, and will take place from 30 November to 2 December 2023 at Divani Palace Larissa Hotel. You can read the conference’s announcement here. Additionally, our project coordinating partner, the University of Thessaly, was severely affected by the flooding that caused disruptions to the university’s facilities and IT services. After monitoring these circumstances and bearing in mind the conference’s announcement, the INTOMED consortium has decided to postpone its presence at the conference to November 2023....

The Hellenic Scientific Society MIKROBIOKOSMOS is organizing its 10th International Conference in Larissa, Greece from 17-19 September 2023. The first day of this Conference will be focused on celebrating International Microorganism Day with parallel activities for students and the general public under the theme “Microbes meet humans” and “All microbes for a sustainable future”. INTOMED PRIMA will be part of the conference and the International Microorganism Day. Learn more about our activities at the IMD website.

Aiming to highlight INTOMED’s applications to the agricultural industry, in collaboration with ELGO-DIMITRA, we are organising an event to gather industry professionals. Through this whole-day event, the project’s partners and collaborators will share the project’s latest results and will discuss their potential applications to the agricultural landscape of Greece. Join us on Wednesday 20 September 2023 at ELGO-DIMITRA headquarters in Larissa for a day full of discussions and innovation. You can download the event’s programme by clicking here.

With the theme ‘all microbes for a sustainable future’, the Hellenic Scientific Society MIKROBIOKOSMOS invites all those involved in research in the field of Microbiology, especially young researchers, to participate in the 10th International Conference of MIKROBIOKOSMOS which will be held in Larissa from 17 to 19 September 2023. The aim of the conference is to bring together a multidisciplinary audience of leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results in the field of Microbiology. INTOMED partners will be presenting the project’s results during a dedicated session on Monday 18 September 2018. The plenary lecture will be delivered by Sharon Zytynska. The session will feature: 17.30- 17.45 S6_OP34_Innovative tools to combat key pests of tomato Maria Pappas 17.45-18.00 S6_OP35_MIR as a model to decipher plant mechanisms' resistance against pests and pathogens Paloma Sanchez-Bel 18.00-18.15 S6_OP36_Mycorrhizal symbiosis triggers multifaceted resistance in susceptible citrus...

Our project coordinator, Kalliope Papadopoulou, will take part in the Women Leading the Green Future: PRIMA’s Empowerment and Gender Perspectives at EU Green Week 2023. Dr Papadopoulou will present the strategy and results from Work Package 7 (WP7) of the INTOMED project to the EU Green Week event organised by PRIMA in 5 - 6 June 2023. Learn more about the event here.

Together with our collaborating partners and coordinating team at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly, we organised two in-person training courses on small RNA plant protection and microbiome analysis. Our training course on "Small RNA-mediated plant protection" was a great success! During the two days of the course, with the guidance of Athanasios Dalakouras from the Hellenic Agricultural Organization Demeter, Institute of Industrial and Forage Crops, the participants discovered the overall background of RNAi mechanisms, tried out plant injections and had inspiring discussions on developing novel tools! After our very successful training course on small RNA, Dr Sotirios Vasileiadis, Assistant Professor in Molecular Microbial Ecology and Genomics, delivered a 5-day practical course on 'Primer on microbiome analysis'. The participants dived deeper into 'metabarcoding' methodologies and microbial diversity analysis whilst using computational tools for handling the volume of sequencing data. For this workshop, INTOMED collaborated closely...

Our partners at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) in collaboration with the Diputación de Castellón, are organising a Symposium on Sustainable Agriculture. In the upcoming symposium, we bring together all the actors of the scientific agriculture chain. We welcome, producers, farmers, agritech companies, policymakers and researchers. At this status of INTOMED development, we face the challenge to offer real solutions to the producers, this is why we bring together the panel of invited speakers, scientists and four companies that are currently marketing inocula for biocontrol and biopesticides as well as cero residue products to be used in sustainable agriculture. We aim not only to show our interesting findings about the potential use of beneficial organisms to protect crops but also to facilitate farmers’ chances to acquire these sorts of products. We also aim to encourage these companies to establish new lines of collaboration with INTOMED scientists to start developing commercial...

Aiming to share our work and research, we are launching our new YouTube channel via our ‘Meet Our Partners’ campaign. Through a series of videos, the public can discover the work packages of the project and our partners. Take a dive into our work and Meet Our Partners by visiting our channel here.

Increasing demand for water, energy and food, due to population growth and urbanization, is aggravated by unprecedented extreme weather and climatic conditions. This situation is likely to undermine the sustainable and peaceful development of the Mediterranean region. As these sectors are strongly interlinked, sustainable development and social stability in the region cannot be achieved simply by considering the management of Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems (WEFE) as separate resources. Partnerships between policy makers, practitioners and scientists are essential to identify best practices and solutions across this nexus, to be shared and used across borders in the Mediterranean region. The Conference will analyse the role of science as a driver of innovation for the sustainable development of the Mediterranean region,  and its interfacing with the policy and decision-making processes. It will recommend practical measures on how to integrate new paths in research and planning across the WEFE Nexus, through a collaborative...

During these unprecedented times, we need to adapt and offer equal online opportunities for expanding research and innovation. On that ground, our collaborating partner from the Democritus University of Thrace and the Agricultural Entomology & Zoology Laboratory of the Department of Agricultural Development, organised INTOMED’s Online International Symposium. More than 250 participants from all over the world had the opportunity to attend our Symposium which was held on Friday 4th of December and shed light on Biologicals/Biopesticides/Biostimulants and EU policies.Through this online event, we aimed to bring together researchers, public and private sector representatives to consider integration opportunities and best practices in biological control in the context of current EU policies. The Symposium included a plethora of keynote talks and panel discussions into three distinct levels, Biologicals/Biopesticides/Biostimulants, EU policies and Industry perspectives.The attendees gained knowledge on the latest research updates regarding new ways, molecules and agents to sustainably manage agricultural...