Researchers of environmental, analytical and green chemistry of Baltic countries assembled in Vilnius, Lithuania at EcoBalt conference to share newest knowledge in their research areas. Knowledge of biotic environment was shared by a member of our team, Maarja Öpik, who explained in her presentation why should we care about soil microbiota. Estonian researchers were represented by Ivo Leito from Tartu University, Merike Vaher and Piret Saar-Reismaa from TalTech and Siiri Saaver from Estonian Environmental Research Centre.

Raquel is a PhD student from the University of Vigo (Spain) studying soil fauna and carbon dynamics in peatlands. Here in Tartu she is learning about fungal communities in peatlands, and I will get familiarized with DNA extraction and approaches to identify fungi by using DNA sequences with some soil samples collected her my study sites in north-western Spain. She is being supervised by Maarja Öpik.