The Department of Environmental Sciences at ICoN9

The Department of Environmental Sciences at ICoN9

📍 Βρέμη, Γερμανία | ICoN9 – 9th International Conference for Nitrification and Related Processes

The Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Thessaly had an active and dynamic presence at the 9th International Conference for Nitrification and Related Processes (ICoN9), held in Bremen, Germany, from June 22–26, 2025. Researchers from the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology and Virology presented cutting-edge work on microbial nitrification, the impacts of agrochemicals, and the cellular-level mode of action of biological nitrification inhibitors.

Maria Kolovou, a PhD candidate, opened the Early Career Workshop with an oral presentation and later shared her work in a poster session. Her study focuses on the use of synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) to evaluate the ecotoxicity of agricultural chemicals on soil nitrifiers, highlighting the importance of microbial interaction complexity.

Dimitris Dalkidis, also a PhD candidate, presented results from a collaborative study with the University of Vienna, investigating how nitrification inhibitors affect the ammonia-oxidizing archaeon Nitrososphaera viennensis using transcriptomic and proteomic tools.

Assistant Professor Evangelia Papadopoulou presented a high-throughput screening platform to test the inhibitory activity of wheat root exudates as biological nitrification inhibitors, using representative soil nitrifying microorganisms.

The Department’s participation at ICoN9 highlighted its strong contribution to research on soil nitrogen cycling and the management of nitrifying microbial communities with the broader goal of promoting sustainable practices in agriculture and the protection of the environment.

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