The Biologie Olympiade is a competition for which high school students throughout the Netherlands can sign up. They go through several rounds of theoretical and lab skill tests, after which the top four will go to Lithouwen to compete with students from all over Europe in a final round!

For this first selection round our UvA group received 100 students in their teaching labs. Lab managers Suzanne Alves Aflitos-Hoogstrate and Mario Schilder prepared a practical lab module in which the students looked at whether or not a pathogenic AM fungi and the parasitic plant broomrape would infect two mutants of tomato and rice: a strigolactone-producing wild-type and a non strigolactone-producing mutant. For this they did DNA extractions, ran a PCR and used microscopy.

Harro Bouwmeester had the following to say about the day: "I tried to talk to every group about their findings after these experiments and am very impressed by all the results. Within a day these students were able to use several lab skills and argue their findings very well."

After this the students will make a test and the top 20 will go on for a week of teaching, lab modules and tests at Wageningen University. Good luck to all the students on the test!