Save the date - SPRINT 2nd plenary meeting: 18 to 22 October 2021. 

The sampling campaign has started!
May-June 2021 

Most of our Case Study Site teams already started their sampling campaign. The first step was placing the dust sampler and the insect traps in the respective fields, followed by the environmental, animal, and human samples collection. See some pictures below.

 sampling in Portugal (vineyards)

sampling in the Netherlands (Potato) 

sampling in Denmark (cereals)

sampling in the Czech Republic (oil plants)

Pre-season interviews with farmers - WP6 
March-May 2021 

Case Study Site leaders will visit the farmers in their country that will be participating in SPRINT. During their visit, they will interview the farmers but also CSS-L gets to know the farms better. This gives a chance to plan the sampling (during the season) in more detail. 

The interview is the first interview for WP6. This Work Package evaluates the case studies in terms of environmental and economic sustainability in a cost-benefit (C-B) analysis of different farming scenarios (C-I-O) across spatial scales. A pre-sampling interview will give more insight into the general farm description and the blueprints of the crop-specific management practices. After the season ends, a second interview will take place in order to complement the information with the management activities and experiences linked to the reference growing season.

Training by experts for Case Study Site Leaders
11 to 12 March 2021 

On the 11th of March, the training for all of the 11 Case Study Site Leaders kicked off with workshops from WP2. Different experts explained how we should interview people that participate in the SPRINT study. In small groups we practiced the Q&A which was very valueble in order to get familiar with the questions but also to ask experts for more detailed explanations. 

Another part of the day was a detailed explanation on how to sample humans and animals for different matrixes, such as urine and blood. Sometimes  accompanied by interesting visual material.  

The next day was dedicated to environmental sampling: Soil, water, sediment, microvertebrates, insects, fish and plants. All in all it was very informative and also the lively discussion followed afterwards, will help the sampling of SPRINT to improve even further. 

Pre-screening sampling activities
9 to 23 November 2020

Case study site (CSS) data is crucial to define the list of compounds for the project and to start the analytical work preparations. This starts with WP2 which involves a relatively wide range of active substances and metabolites. At a later stage, based on the outcome of WP2 analyses, sub-selections will be made for further work (including mixtures) within WP3 and WP4. 

CSS-leaders were asked to collect a few samples from conventional farms for a pre-screen field testing, i.e. untargeted pesticide residues analyses. Soil, freshwater sediment, household dust and stable dust were collected in all the 11 case study sites and send to Wageningen for analysis. 

Daria Sgargi sampling the fields in the Po Basin area -  Italy

Paula and Noa in the Dutch CSS for pre-sampling - 18 november 2020   (Foto credits: Esperanza Huerta Lwanga)

  Jacub taking samples in the pre-sampling in Czech

​  The pre-screening sites of CSS-Denmark Foto credits: Trine Norgaard

Kick-off Meeting 
12 to 15 October 2020

Given the current COVID-19 situation, we decided to have an online Kick-Off Meeting. In this KOM we will lay the foundation for a streamlined and like-minded collaboration between all partners.