Plant & Environmental
Biotechnology Laboratory

Panagiotis Karas

Senior Researcher

Dr. Panagiotis Karas is a Senior Researcher in Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology and he has a Bachelor’s Degree (BSc) in Agricultural Products Technology from the Department of Agricultural Technology of the Technological Educational Institution of Kalamata and a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Biotechnology – Nutrition and Environmental Quality from the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (University of Thessaly). In his Doctorate (PhD) he studied the biological treatment of agro-industrial effluents contaminated with pesticides and his dissertation was titled: “Biological treatment of pesticide-contaminated wastewaters from the fruit packaging industry”. He has worked as a scientific associate and postdoctoral researcher in Greece and Italy in a total of 13 research projects funded by the EU (MSCA – ITN – EID – H2020) and national initiatives (H.F.R.I – GSRI – Ministry of Rural Development and Food: METRO 16) and his work focused on monitoring environmental pollutants in soil and in parallel on the biodegradation of pesticide contaminated wastewaters from the fruit packing industries via tailor made microbial inocula. Currently, he is working on the biological systems called “Biobeds” able to treat pesticide contaminated wastewaters from agricultural sprayer machines and on the effects of pollutants on the composition and function of the soil microbial communities with modern omics techniques (amplicon sequencing, metagenomics and transcriptomic data). His research work includes 20 conference papers and 32 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, with 778 citations and an h-index of 19.

Publications

Manukyan, A., Pedrinho, A., Karas, P. A., Papadopoulos, C., Katsoula, A., Vasileiadis, S., Karpouzas, D. G., & Papadopoulou, K. K. (2026). Mycorrhizal inoculum–mediated modulation of maize–rhizosphere interactions under pesticide stress. European Journal of Soil Biology, 130, 103844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejsobi.2026.103844

Katsivelou, E., Perruchon, C., Karas, P. A., Sarantidou, A., Pappa, E., Katsoula, A., Ligda, P., Sotiraki, S., Martin-Laurent, F., Vasileiadis, S., & Karpouzas, D. G. (2023). Accelerated dissipation, soil microbial toxicity and dispersal of antimicrobial resistance in soils repeatedly exposed to tiamulin, tilmicosin and sulfamethoxazole. Science of The Total Environment, 893, 164817. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164817

Perruchon, C., Tagkalidou, N., Kalogiouri, N., Katsivelou, E., Karas, P. A., Menkissoglu-Spiroudi, U., Vasileiadis, S., & Karpouzas, D. G. (2025). Isolation of a Sphingomonas strain able to degrade the pleuromutilin antibiotic tiamulin: In vitro characterization of the antibiotic transformation capacity and pathway elucidation via comparative genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 32(40), 23081–23096. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-025-36996-y

Karas, P. A., Vasileiadis, S., Papazlatani, C., Batsaki, A., Mavriou, Z., Alexandropoulou, I., Melidis, P., Ntougias, S., & Karpouzas, D. G. (2025). Depuration of fungicide-contaminated effluents from fruit-packaging plants in a full-scale modular bioreactor inoculated with tailor-made microbial inocula. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 494, 138535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.138535

Papazlatani C., Vasileiadis S., Panagopoulou E., Damalas D., Karas P.A., Gerovasileiou E.,  Thomaidis N., Karpouzas D.G., (2025) Genomic, transcriptomic and suspect/non-target screening analyses reveal the role of CYP450s in the degradation of imazalil and delineate its transformation pathway by Cladosporium herbarum. Microbial Biotechnology 18:e70102 https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.70102

Swaine M., Bergna A., Oyserman B., Vasileiadis S., Karas P.A., Screpanti C., Karpouzas D.G., (2025) Impact of pesticides on soil health: identification of key soil microbial indicators for ecotoxicological assessment strategies through meta-analysis. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 101(6) fiaf052, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiaf052

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