Diana Costa (DC) obtained a BSc degree in Biochemistry (2022) and is currently integrated in the Biochemistry MSc course from FCTUC. In 2021 and 2022, she completed a Summer Internship (240 hours) and the Final BSc Project (20), respectively, at NEMATO-Lab and Soil Ecology and Ecotoxicology Lab (Centre for Functional Ecology-CFE), with the supervision of Dra. Carla Maleita, where she was able to work in morphological, biochemical and molecular characterization of root-knot nematodes (RKN). From the developed work emerged the opportunity to characterize a new isolate of RKN, and prepare an article to be published (under preparation - A new esterase phenotype in Meloidogyne arenaria: morphological and molecular characterization). In 2023, DC joins the project ProBag - Plant Protection Bag: a new, practical and sustainable system for plant-parasitic nematodes management in conventional and family farming (winner of the 3rd edition of Sementes de Investigação¿, UC) as her MSc thesis research project at Chemical Engineering and Renewable Resources for Sustainability (CERES), in collaboration with NEMATO-Lab, and Soil Ecology and Ecotoxicology Lab. ProBag centered on the development of sustainable strategies for the control of plant parasitic nematodes (PPN), with natural compounds derived from agro-industrial residues, with the goal of supplying environmentally sustainable alternatives to the currently employed nematode control methods, in addition to a comprehensive assessment of the effects of bionematicides on plants and soil fauna. DC attended a national workshop ('Estratégias sustentáveis para o controlo de nemátodes fitoparasitas', under the BioNem Mulch Project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029392), in partnership with the Direção Regional de Agricultura e Pescas do Centro, (30 June, 2022) organized by Carla Maleita; the international 2022 Bio-Rad Gene Expression Webinar; and the international scientific meeting Advances in Nematology 2022 organized by Association of Applied Biologists and Advances in Nematology 2023 were she gave a online oral presentation on "A new esterase phenotype in Meloidogyne arenaria: morphological and molecular characterization"