BgF Summer school - Workshop eDNA focus on macrophytes successfully organized (4-6 October 2023)

The BIOLAWEB team organized the second workshop within BgF Summer School “eDNA focus on macrophytes”, from 4-6 October 2023 at the University of Belgrade, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy - National Institute of the Republic of Serbia (UB-ICTM).

The workshop was led by Dr Andreas Ballot, a scientist from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), one of Europe’s leading institutes for fundamental and applied research on marine and freshwater.

Once more, the participants had the privilege to gain valuable knowledge about the latest advances in science. Some of the topics were: the introduction to aquatic macrophytes, the introduction to field sampling of eDNA aquatic macrophytes, the introduction to DNA isolation, PCR preparation, (meta)barcoding. 

The theoretical part of the workshop was followed by a field exercise on Savsko lake where participants had the chance to see in practice how the sampling and filtration of DNA samples is done. Furthermore, they were given an opportunity to try the filtrations on their own and gain their first practical skills in “metabarcoding”. The group showed a high willingness to learn and try new things giving us faith and belief that the BIOLAWEB project’s goals and ideas were the right ones and are going in the right direction.