From 17 to 24 August 2021, a summer school called Host Plant Resistance Breeding took place in Alnarp, one of the 4 campuses of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) based in Uppsala. It was organized as part of the ESCAPAdE project - EraSmus Curricula in Applied PlAnt SciEnces, a European project funded by the European Union-funded Erasmus + Strategic partnership from September 2018 to August 2021 and focused on the development of plant sciences in response to global change (e.g. integrated crop protection and breeding). The summer school was attended by 40 master's students from a number of European universities of the ELLS consortium, including 4 FTZ students, 8 tutors - doctoral students who led smaller groups of students and helped them solve assigned tasks (two tutors were from FTZ: Anna Maňourová and Ingrid Faltová), and many experts in the field of APS (including doc. Zbyněk Polesný from FTZ), who assigned and evaluated tasks and led lectures and workshops.
Authentic view of two PhD tutors:
“Thanks to the ESCAPAdE project, we had the opportunity to participate in a summer school in Alnarp, Sweden, whose campus belongs to SLU. The main topic of this weekly training was the breeding of resistant plants to diseases and pests. During a very intensive six days, students from the partner ELLS universities attended not only interesting lectures, but also several workshops and group work on various topics, starting with insect pheromones and ending with transgenic organisms. As a tutor, we each took care of our own group of students, whose goal was to prepare a two-page summary and a three-minute presentation using the "project based learning" method. By respecting our faculty, we came up with two themes: "How to form and pest resistance in crops: the study case of Noorda blitealis on moringa trees in Ethiopia" and "Antimicrobial activity of essential oils against pathogens causing agricultural spoilage", the latter mentioned the topic was finally awarded by a commission of experts on plant protection and breeding. The presentations took place in the style of a scientific conference and thus offered students the opportunity to try out the final discussion and questions directly on the body. Although this week, especially for students, was really challenging, for many it was one of the first chances to get abroad from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and experience teaching other than online. Both the students and the lecturers really tried to get the best out of themselves, they were full of ideas and energy, and Alnarp became, at least for a while, the academic center of the whole of Sweden. ”
More information about the partners, activities and outputs of the ESCAPAdE project can be found on the website.
