The final two student groups from the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Maribor, have successfully completed their BIOSHIELD pilot activities. As part of the pilot, the students carried out a hands-on pot experiment with lettuce and spinach, exploring microbiome-based approaches to improve plant responses to drought stress.
Working with living plants also taught the students an important lesson: experiments need time, patience and sometimes a little flexibility when things do not go exactly as planned. Students followed tested plants throughout the experiment, performed measurements, participated in data analysis and interpretation, and concluded their work by presenting and defending their results before an evaluation panel.