“Nature and society” is the theme of this year’s Science Festival, which has been happening throughout Croatia since 2003 and is still the largest science popularization event in Croatia. As part of the Festival, PhD student Emanuel Gaši will give a lecture titled “Social life of plants: how do plants communicate?” and present one of the topics that our project deals with. http://novosti.krs.hr/festival-znanosti-na-institutu/

“At the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, as part of the Doctoral Study in Biology, PhD student Emanuel Gaši, mag. oecol., held Seminar II on March 27, 2023, where he defended the topic of his doctoral dissertation. The proposed title is “Potential of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to alter the response of grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) to virus infection.” Congratulations and good luck with further progress in dissertation preparation!”

At the Competition for the co-financing of Croatian-Slovenian scientific research projects for 2023-2025 a bilateral cooperation project with the Faculty of Biotechnology, Department of Biology, University of Ljubljana, entitled “Grapevine, viruses and mycorrhizal fungi – analysis of the complex interplay” is accepted. The main leaders are collaborators on the Myco Grape project: Ph.D. Katarina Hančević from the Croatian side and doc. Ph.D. Matevž Likar from the Slovenian side. The main goal of the project is to continue and improve the cooperation between the two teams through mutual visits and training. During them collaborators will jointly work on the application of various statistical methods in a detailed analysis of the relationship between the grapevine, pathogenic and beneficial microorganisms.

During the winter period 2022, PhD Tomislav Radić visited the Laboratory of Biology of Plant Interactions led by PhD Raffaella Balestrini at the Institute for the sustainable plant protection in Turin, Italy. There, during three weeks period, under the guidance of experts, he gained methodological knowledge in the determination of expression of genes related to the plant’s response to mycorrhizal status. PhD Radić will transfer the acquired knowledge and skills to his home team at the Institute for Adriatic Crops, where they will work on introducing gene expression methodology into routine use within a project for the purpose of understanding the interactions between grapevine and microorganisms.

PhD student Emanuel Gaši attended a three-week training period which took place from 28th November to 16th December 2022 in the Laboratory for functional genomics, Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection, Turin, Italy. Under the guidance of PhD Giorgio Gambino, he gained knowledge on the detection and relative quantification of viruses in various grapevine tissues using real-time quantitative PCR methodology. Learned skills will be applied in further work at home Institute on real time qPCR machine which was acquired from the “MYCO GRAPE” project.

Two other distinguished scientists joined the research team of our project: prof. Vicent Arbona and Ph.D. Miguel Gonzalez-Guzman, from Universitat Jaume I, Castello de la Plana, Spain. Their expertise is in the physiology and biochemistry of plants exposed to stressful conditions. Their focus in this project will be on the dynamics of grapevine hormones due to the interaction with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and viruses. We look forward to the newly established cooperation and expect interesting results!

European Researchers’ Night 2022

On Friday, September 30, 2022, the European Night of Researchers was held. In Marmontova Street, visitors could discover interesting information about the microbiological world that shapes the life of the vine. We showed visitors the symptoms of vine viral diseases, mycorrhizal fungi on vine roots, and lots of other interactive content suitable for all ages.

See you next year at the Night of Researchers!

Our project was presented at the Science Festival 2022, whose main theme this time was – LIFE. PhD student Emanuel Gaši, mag. oecol., explained to numerous audiences in an original and interesting way how microorganisms form the pillar of life and how they are interrelated with all other organisms. The lecture “Invisible life of the Mediterranean – microorganisms as a pillar of life” is Emanuel’s first public presentation of the research topic in which he participates in this HRZZ project, we look forward to the upcoming ones …