PubMed · 2026-01-01
A European research collaboration helped a Serbian university build stronger scientific skills around how organic soil amendments—like compost and manure—affect nutrients and contaminants in the soil. The project showed that pairing hands-on research with conceptual training is the most effective way to grow scientific capacity in under-resourced regions.
Combining scientist mobility and expert exchanges with applied research produced multi-scale insights into how organic amendments age in soil and transform organic matter over time.
Collaborative training substantially improved analytical confidence and interdisciplinary reasoning at the University of Novi Sad, demonstrating measurable institutional capacity growth.
The twinning model worked best when conceptual training and hands-on research were tightly integrated rather than treated as separate activities.