Cultivating agricultural innovation with pipetting technology

The National Agricultural Research and Development Institute (NARDI) in Fundulea, Romania, uses electronic multichannel pipettes from Integra Biosciences to streamline its liquid handling workflows. These pipettes are crucial for the institute’s phenotyping and genotyping laboratory, enabling the extraction and analysis of DNA from hundreds of samples daily. This scientific approach is key to addressing current agricultural challenges such as climate change, land scarcity, and biodiversity loss.

Recognised as Romania's leading agricultural research centre, NARDI Fundulea has developed over 400 cultivars of field crops, including sunflower, maize, wheat, durum wheat, barley, and soybeans, through its breeding program. To support this effort, the institute performs various genetic diversity and association studies for essential agronomic traits like disease resistance, heat and stress tolerance, drought resilience, and quality. The facility integrated its first VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipette into the laboratory in 2015, quickly making these pipettes indispensable to their workflows.

Daniel Cristina, a researcher in the genotyping and phenotyping laboratory, stated: “We investigate numerous genomic and phenotypic markers in crops harvested from local fields, helping our breeders develop new plant varieties with desirable traits. This involves performing many polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays and more specific genotyping experiments, such as competitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) assays, which require extensive liquid handling. We rely on our VOYAGER pipettes, with their unique motorised tip spacing adjustment, to efficiently transfer multiple samples between different labware sizes and formats, including tubes to plates.”

He added: “We use the VOYAGER pipettes for both simple liquid handling and for dispensing and mixing nucleic acid samples. Reducing repetitive pipetting steps lowers the chance of human error, while handling multiple samples simultaneously improves our throughput and sample tracking. As climate change continues to pose challenges, we plan to expand our range of VOYAGER pipettes to further support the agricultural industry in overcoming these issues.”

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