A chance meeting between Dr Marta Kovač of the Croatian Forest Research Institute and FABI’s Prof. Mike Wingfield at the 12^th International Congress of Plant Pathology (ICPP) in 2023, in Lyon (France) marked the start of a new and exciting collaborative research project.  The main focus of the project is on the fungi associated with the pine-infesting bark beetles and especially Orthotomicus erosus, which is native in Croatia.  The same beetle, accidentally introduced into South Africa where it was first discovered in the 1970s and the fungi that live in close association with it, have been the subject of numerous FABI studies in the past.  An important missing link has been to compare these fungi with those that are found with the beetle where it is native, raising the opportunity to establish a collaboration between FABI and Croatian researchers.  A starting point in this collaboration was a visit to Croatia by FABI’s Dr Nam Pham who worked with Dr Kovač and her colleagues to make an initial collection of these fungi. A positive boost for the collaboration has been the successful grant application and funding to Dr Kovac from the Croatian Science Foundation, which will support the research for the coming five years.  Collaborators in the project that will include student projects and exchange visits are Dr Martha Kovač, Dr Milan Pernek, Dr Jelena Kranjec Orlović, Dr Nam Pham, Dr Markus Wilken and Prof. Mike Wingfield.