INCREASE – Intelligent Collections of Food Legumes Genetic Resources for European Agrofood Systems

20.000 seed bags for 3.000 INCREASE Citizen Scientists

Many helping hands are currently preparing 20.000 seed bags for the INCREASE Citizen Science Experiment at Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy.

The INCREASE Citizen Science Experiment has now received more than 3.000 registrations and each successfully registered citizen will receive five small bags of INCREASE lines (landraces from the EU and all over the world) plus one small bag of a common commercial bean variety used as control (the same for all citizens).
At Università Politecnica delle Marche, the INCREASE team had already started in November 2020 to prepare the 100 seeds for the 1.000 selected INCREASE Citizen Science Experiment lines. The preparation of the Citizen Science Experiment then went into the “hot phase” at the beginning of this year and during the past ten days at least eight people were involved every day in counting, labelling, randomising and packaging of the seed bags. With their joint efforts, they have now prepared 17.700 of around 20.000 seed bags and we would like to share some pictures of this adventure with you.

The bags will be sent out to all successfully registered Citizen Scientists starting from 14th of April and throughout the rest of the month.

Thanks for joining us on this adventure! Share the bean!