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 with the Aristo MSCA (MSCA – ITN – EID) programme and young scientists from both consortia participated and interacted on common research interests on soil microbiome analysis towards sustainable agriculture.

Thank you all for taking part in our training courses and especially our partners from the Plant & Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory of the University of Thessaly.