She acquired the highest scientific knowledge at the Belgrade University, Faculty of Agriculture in Zemun. She worked at the Institute for Agricultural Research on seed selection, and then at the Institute for Ecology at the examination of allelopathic interactions as a close assistant of the academician Siniša Stanković, whose name the Institute will later bear. After the study visit in Oxford, where she worked at the experimental centre for the implementation of herbicides, she dedicated herself to the pioneer examination of the biochemical influences among plants, which after several decades of work brought her to her main discovery – natural bio-regulator that she named “Agrostemin”. Because it is created by the extraction of the useful matter from the cockle (Agrostemma githago) and other plant and weed kinds, it is completely harmless for people, animals (including bees), and natural environment. This discovery in science, in particular in practice, introduces new principle in the procedure of the increase of harvest and quality of agricultural products based on the positive allelopathic influences inside the specific biocenosis. Agrostemin has been successfully implemented for more than four decades in Serbia and in the world.
Patent protection has been granted to Agrostemin in 1974 under the title “Procedure for the Stimulation of Growth and Development of Plants of Allantoic Species”, by the domestic patent YU32749B and Danish patent number DK29614B. Because of the importance and the practical implementation of this invention, the World Intellectual Property Organization awarded the golden medal for the Life’s Work to Danica Gajić in 1987.
