Vision
MAGNET’s vision is to provide high impact environmental and economic benefits to Cyprus’s bio-economy and bio-sciences, by promoting advanced innovative microbial solutions for agriculture to optimize crop yields and quality in a climate changing environment and provide a more sustainable industry impact profile, ultimately resulting in new opportunities to protect the environment,
Developing – A unique state-of-the-art National Infrastructure Unit able to collect, analyze and understand the structure,function, activities and dynamics of soil microbial communities generating solutions to societal challenges.
Contribute – basic inventories that are necessary to monitor changes in soil biodiversity. These changes are typically due to threats to natural and agricultural ecosystems such as climate change, pollution and agricultural practices.
Aim
The overall aim of the proposed project is to establish a state-of-the-art environMentAl microbioloGy aNd biotEchnology uniT (MAGNET) for the exploitation of native microbial diversity aiming at:
Facility – Producing a reliable facility for acquisition,storage and characterization of soil genetic resources
Resources – Make these resources available for the whole scientific community and policy-makers. To achieve this, the proposed Infrastructure Unit will combine, integrate and validate a range of existing advanced technologies, methodologies and approaches , which are:
- extensive sampling, storage and conservation of soils, soil microbes (pure cultures and DNA) from natural and agricultural ecosystems
- high-throughput sequencing and phenotype screening
- information system for the integration of genomic and soil satellite information data with ecosystems
- evaluation of specific microbial inocula explicitly dedicated to Cyprus agriculture.
Soil – Biobank
Facilities
Protocols
Latest Publications
“The important thing is to never stop questioning”
Trusted Partners
Project under the reference number “INFRASTRUCTURES / 1216/0032”, the acronym “MAGNET” and the title “Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology Center”
