Business trip report, Austria, Strunecký

The Research Institute in Mondsee is a long-established center focused on lake limnology. I visited Associate Professor Rainer Kurmayer, a recognized expert in lake microbiology who specializes in the production of toxins by planktic cyanobacteria. Austrian colleagues enabled me to collect phytoplankton and sediment samples from deep cold lakes—both pristine and long-term polluted areas—which we subsequently analyzed together and used for cultivation experiments. This material will further serve for the cultivation of microorganisms metabolizing nitrogen compounds. I also participated in a two-day block of the limnology course at the University of Innsbruck, where I was involved in the analysis of cyanobacteria from alpine streams.