Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing (IHPS), Slovenia

The Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing (IHPS) conducts research in plant disease diagnostics, epidemiology, plant–pathogen interactions, and disease management, with expertise in fungal pathogens, oomycetes, viruses, and viroids.

The IHPS Plant Protection Diagnostics Laboratory focuses on diseases affecting hops, hemp, vegetables, and fruit trees, combining molecular and serological diagnostics with experimental plant cultivation. Its facilities include PCR and qPCR, ELISA, growth chambers, greenhouses, and experimental fields.

Within the ViroiDoc project, the IHPS phytopathology team contributes expertise in plant disease diagnostics, pathogen detection, epidemiology, and plant–pathogen interactions, supported by collaboration with other IHPS departments, including expertise in plant metabolomic responses to pathogen infection.

In addition to ViroiDoc, IHPS, in collaboration with Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, and the Jožef Stefan Institute, is coordinating the EnviroViroSeq project. The project aims to investigate viromes in hops and related agroecosystems in Slovenia, using advanced high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and artificial intelligence approaches.

ViroiDoc research team

Sebastjan Radišek, Tanja Guček, and DC / MSCA Fellow Octave Lacroix