My main interests are the functionality of the soil, in particular the study of the role of soil microbiota in the provision of the various ecosystem services; sustainability of the food system and agroforestry systems.
I am currently a student of the 1st year of PhD of the CULTIVAR project and I am part of the line of research: Evaluation of soil health parameters in different agricultural systems in the region of Idanha-a-Nova.
I develop my work at the Plant Health Laboratory of the Pedro Nunes Institute, the Soil Ecology and Ecotoxicology Laboratory and the Microbiology Laboratory of the Centre for Functional Ecology – Science for People & the Planet.
The technique I use most in my work is Metabarcoding, a New Generation Massive DNA Sequencing (NGS) technique for the study of the structural diversity of microbiota communities.
This technique also allows predicting functions and identifying groups of relevant bacteria and fungi, such as: plant growth promoters (PGPB/PGPF), disease causators, etc., contributing to generate knowledge about the relationship between the microbiota and the various ecosystem services provided by the soil.
It follows the work of Ricardo Veiga Leitão in:
Ciencia vitae – B81A-4EAD-B68B
Orcid – 0000-0002-0438-6700
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-leitao-42a920147/
