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Dr. Ines Sviličić Petrić

Senior research associate
Internal phone number
1442
Academic title
Assistant Professor
Address
Bijenic street 54
10 002 Zagreb
Croatia
Curriculum vitae

Education

2002. Zagreb, Croatia, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Biology,Bachelor (BA) of Science in Ecology

2009. Zagreb, Croatia, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Biology, Ph.D. in Microbiology

2010-2011. France, Dijon, INRA, Laboratory for Soil and Environmental Microbiology, Postdoctoral research

Research Areas

Specific research interests

Projects

1. Principal investigator of the EU funded project "Exploring adaptation potential of rhizosphere microbiome to climate change: towards sustainable agriculture in the future" (EU structural and development fund; EU regional development fund)

https://perspire.eu/

Climate change represents one of the biggest challenges to agricultural sustainability and food security. As stated in the “Seventh National Communication of the Republic of Croatia under the United Nation Framework Convention on the Climate Change(UNFCCC)” agricultural sector will suffer the greatest damage from the consequences of climate change in this country. Facing the challenge of an uncertain future, the “Food and Agriculture Organization” (FAO) has already launched "Climate Smart Agriculture" initiative with the aim to develop strategies and measures to ensure sustainable agriculture in climate-affected areas. Project “Exploring adaptation potential of rhizosphere microbiome to climate change: towards sustainable agriculture in the future”, funded by EU regional development fund aims to study the effects of the projected extreme weather events (string rains followed by floods) on the complex interaction existing between rhizosphere microbiome and its plant. This interaction forms the basis of plant success, determining its health, growth, development and productivity, as well as soil fertility. Studying the responses of the rhizosphere microbial community and plants on different resolution levels to the extreme weather conditions is necessary to better understand the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector in future. This knowledge could eventually be used to ensure resilience and recovery capacity of the plants under expected climate change scenarios.

2. Principal investigator of the Croatian Science Foundation Research Project "Structure and function of microbial communities as a missing link for quality assessment of anthropogenically disturbed coastal zones" (MicroLink) 2021-2025

http://hrzz-microlink.unaux.com/

With anthropogenically-driven pressures drastically changing marine coastal ecosystems much international efforts have been focused on its protection. For that reason, Mediterranean states have accepted numerous regional and international contracts. Even though much effort has been given into protection of marine ecosystems by combining and integrating approaches from WFD and MSFD, these tools are still facing many challenges. Within the frame of the MicroLink project we will focus on the anthropogenic pressures effects onto benthic microbial assemblages, fully neglected in the quality legislation protocols. We believed that microbial assemblages could offer potential answer to some of the challenges facing marine protection programmes: (i) challenge of determining effects of multiple pollution pressures on the integrity of the coastal marine ecosystem, (ii) possible improvement of the existing biological indicators pool (iii) potential of applying fast and reliable state-of-the-art approaches to determine structural and functional integrity of marine ecosystems; and (iv) problems associated with assessment of the ecological status of marine sediments. We will tackle the issue by an innovative approach in which we will combine multi-trophic (bacteria, archaea, virus, fungi)/ multilayer approach for studying microbial communities in anthropogenically-impacted vs. reference environments. Microbes dominate marine ecosystems and have pivotal role in biogeochemical cycling and consequently changes exerted on the level of these communities could alter the whole food web, eventually impairing marine ecosystem services. Within this project we intend to focus on an urgent need to define possible contribution and importance of monitoring microbial assemblages in achieving of Good Environmental Status (GES) which could offer us first step toward potential integration of microbial assemblages as indicators of marine environment quality.

Classes

Teaching undergraduate course „Environmental Microbiology“ at the Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Study in Protection of Nature and Environment at the University of Osijek, Croatia

Publications

Journal articles

Scientific and review papers

Conference proceedings papers

Scientific conference proceedings papers

Theses

Doctoral dissertation

  • Petrić, I. (2009) 'Selection and characterization of microbial communities as potential catalysts for biodegradation of polychlorinated biphenyls', doktorska disertacija, Prirodoslovno-matematički fakultet, Zagreb.

Membership in professional associations / societies

Member of the Croatian Microbiological Society – Head of the “Section for microbial ecology”

Member of the French Microbiological Society

Member of the EcotoxicoMic: The international network on Microbial Ecotoxicology

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