In August 2026 FABI Director Prof. Bernard Slippers visited Profs David Drew and Francois Roets, and their shared PhD student Anika Keuck of EucXylo at AgriSciences, Stellenbosch University. The group discussed joint projects linked to the partners' forest Open Air Labs, covering sensors, tree physiology and microbiomes. The main focus of the August visit was how to bring AI tools into these projects. This included the general principles of integrating AI tools into everyday research projects and programs. And as a concrete example, the Microbiome Research Assistant that helps run microbiome metabarcoding pipelines was transferred and implemented for use in Anika’s project. The impact was immediately visible with the analyses of Anika’s first datasets of Eucalyptus lead mycobiomes from the IMPACT Open Air Lab implemented by EucXylo.