Details from Simon Hazelwood-Smith at Science Practice "We are Science Practice, a design and research company focused on applying the principles of design to science. One of our interests is in ways of increasing access to scientific testing in agriculture, and we are currently developing a paper microfluidic device for testing soil nutrients like nitrates, at Imperial College London.

We also have a MinION (a pocket-sized genetic sequencing machine) from Oxford Nanopore and we would like to try using our last two MinION flow cells for agricultural testing. We are looking for a collaborator with lab access who would be interested in trying this out to see if we get any interesting results.

Currently our plan is to test nitrates in two different soil samples with our microfluidic device, and also to use MinION sequencing to identify organisms (bacteria, fungi etc.) found in these two soil samples. The aim is to see if it is possible in principle to detect a relationship between nitrate levels and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This little project would be about two days of lab time (1 day to sequence each soil sample). However we are open to suggestions for other agriculture (e.g. plant) related sequencing projects from anyone who is interested in exploring this exciting new piece of technology with us."

If interested, please contact Jenny Molloy (jcm80@cam.ac.uk) for more information.