MSc. Weronika Kursa
2nd year of the Doctoral School
Discipline: Agriculture and Horticulture
Institute of Agrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Doświadczalna 4 Str., 20-290 Lublin, Poland

On 03/07-03/08/2023 I had the pleasure to participate in a national internship at the Department of Physical Chemistry of Porous Materials of the Institute of Agrophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Lublin. The scientific supervisor of my internship was Dr. Agnieszka Adamczuk. The aim of the internship was to improve professional competences, including gaining theoretical knowledge and practical skills to work in a modern physicochemical laboratory. During the internship, I became acquainted with issues in the field of physicochemistry of the surface of agricultural materials. As part of the internship, I conducted microscopic analyzes of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) leaves sprayed with bioproducts (mixtures of plant extracts) using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). These tasks included the preparation of plant samples for microscopic observation (gold sputtering), and then the study of morphological and anatomical features (observations of cross-sections of leaves under a light microscope).

Photo 1 and 2. Wheat leaf samples during and after gold spotting

As part of the evaluation of the contact angles, I carried out measurements of the wettability of the plant surface with a mixture of plant extracts by determining the angle between the wetted surface of the solid and the tangent to the surface of the drop of the direct wetting drop, derived from its point of contact with the surface of the solid. The internship allowed me to learn new topics in the field of e.g. scanning microscopy, surface properties of porous solids and surface wettability. Thanks to this, I will be able to honestly analyze the assumptions and parameters included in my Individual Research Plan.