Registrations for Citizen Science Experiment on the rise… and Happy Holidays!

As the year comes to a close, the registrations for the INCREASE Citizen Science Experiment are picking up speed. In total, we now have around 1,500 registrations, of which over 350 are repeat participants from previous rounds. Of these repeat participants, 160 have indicated that they can share seeds with other citizen scientists. More than 1,100 participants have registered for the experiment for the first time – great to have you on board! By country, by far the most registrations until now have come from Italy, where an impressive number of 900 citizens has already signed up for the bean journey 2024. Italy is followed by Germany and Spain with around 60 registered citizens each. Registration for the INCREASE Citizen Science Experiment will be open until 29 February 2024, so there is still time to invite your friends, family and colleagues to join us on our journey to grow and investigate 1,127 different bean varieties.

INCREASE wishes all partners, stakeholders and citizen scientists a wonderful holiday season, full of joy, warmth and laughter, and a healthy and bean-tastic New Year! Thank you so much for the time, knowledge and passion you have dedicated to INCREASE in 2023! Your tremendous support for our project is truly extraordinary and absolutely critical to advancing our joint mission of improving the sustainable use of plant genetic resources and promoting agrobiodiversity and its use in Europe and beyond.