BgF Summer School - field exercises (October 2023)

 During the BgF Summer School, besides two theoretical workshops held during the first week, the BIOLAWEB team organized three practical field exercises related to metabarcoding. The first field exercise was organized on October 5th, on Savsko Lake, while two more were organized during the second week, a field exercise to Plava Banja on October 12th, and a field exercise to Pečena Slatina, on October 13th. 

Participants in these exercises had the opportunity to learn how to sample the eDNA of aquatic organisms for metabarcoding analyses. Firstly, BIOLAWEB team members demonstrated to participants how to sample eDNA of aquatic macrophytes and phytoplankton for metabarcoding analyses. In the second part of the exercise, the participants had a chance to repeat the sampling on their own. 

The majority of participants were students of the Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, but also, more experienced colleagues from the Faculty of Biology, The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, and Serbian Environmental Agency, etc. took part in the exercises. 

The participants consider the knowledge and skills gained will be very useful for their future work, and we are grateful and happy to establish an even closer network of our present and future collaborators. Looking forward to new cooperations and projects together in the future.