FABI recently hosted 40 international researchers from seven countries, where the team celebrated a successful 'Mycobiomics' project that was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (RISE) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant since 2020 (Grant agreement no. 101008129). Broadly, the project fostered global collaboration in fungal biodiversity and biotechnology research based on -omics techniques.

The event took place from 2-5 June and welcomed scientists from partner institutions across Europe, Asia, and Africa. These included the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (Germany), the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (the Netherlands), the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Thailand), the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Egerton University (Kenya), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences-BOKU (Austria) and the Austrian Institute of Technology (Austria), alongside the host institute, FABI.

The meeting was opened by FABI Director Prof. Bernard Slippers, followed by an overview of the project by Dr Marc Stadler. Dr Neriman Yilmaz outlined how the Mycobiomics project integrates with FABI’s core research in fungal biodiversity and systematics, as well as driving collaboration, supporting young researchers, and contributing to global fungal science.

Over three days, the programme featured 32 presentations across themed mini-symposia, covering topics from evolutionary biology to natural product discovery. Among the highlights was a keynote presentation by Prof. Peter Mortimer of Applied Symbiotics, titled “New perspectives on how we can use and produce mushrooms: lessons from Asia.” The event concluded with a consortium discussion led by Prof. Stadler and thanks extended to Dr Yilmaz for her role in organising the meeting.

The Mycobiomics Meeting underscored the importance of international collaboration in addressing shared challenges in agriculture, health, and biotechnology. All presentation materials from the meeting has been made available through the Zenodo repository and can be accessed by clicking here.