Stefano Giovanni La Malfa

Stefano La Malfa is, since 2017, Full Professor of Arboriculture and Fruitculture at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of Catania University. He is now teaching “Mediterranean fruit tree species” and “Fruitculture” for the second level degree course in Agricultural Science.

In 1994 he graduated in Agricultural Science at Catania University with full marks and laude; he then worked for one year at Research Center of ENEA in Rome as grant holder of National Research Council (CNR) and for six months at the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias IVIA (Valencia, Spain).

In 2001 he earned a ph.D in "Productivity of cultivated plants" with a thesis on "Citrus genetic improvement through genetic transformation and identification of useful genes”. He has been researcher (2002-2014) and then associate professor (2014-2017) of Arboriculture and Fruitculture at Catania University.

Member of the executive board (2007-2010; 2022 - to date) of the Italian Society of Horticulture (SOI). For SOI he is currently President of the Fruitculture Section (since 2022) and coordinates the workgroup on Teaching and research in Fruit Tree Crops. He has been Convener of the National SOI Congress (Catania, 2021).

He has been and is actually involved, as participant and/or scientific responsible, in several research projects concerning different aspects of fruit tree crops and supported by several Italian and foreign Institutions.

He has been responsible (2007-2014) of an Exchange Erasmus project with the Faculty of Agriculture of Cukurova University, Adana (Turkey); he also cooperated with researchers of many other countries. In particular, for many years he has been invited in China for delivering lessons and seminars in Universities and Research centers.

He has been responsible of the Office for Orientation and Trainings of his Faculty (2008-2012), delegate of the Department for the institution of the degree course in Biotechnology and President of the Joint commission Professors and Students of his Department (2017-2018).

He has been memebr of several selection boards at different level and among these the board for National Scientific Qualification for Academic Staff of 07/B2 sector “Arboriculture and forest systems” (ASN 2018-2020).

He has been member of the Organizing Committees of several national and International Congresses.

He acts as a referee for several international scientific journals, also as member of editorial commitee. He also acted as referee for Research Quality and for Project Evaluation at national level. He has been invited speaker in some international congress and is Editor (with A. Gentile) of Volume 892 of Acta Horticulturae (Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Citrus Biotechnology).

He is member of the teaching board of ph.D. Course in “Agricultural, Food and Environmental Science " at Catania University and he has been supervisor of some ph.D students.

Since 2014 he is active within CUTGANA Center (Centro Universitario per la Tutela e la Gestione degli Ambienti Naturali e degli Agroecosistemi) of Catania University. He also cooperated as an expert with EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), with CSEI-Catania (Centro Studi di Economia applicata all’Ingegneria di Catania), with the Scientific and Technological Park of Sicily and with dryGrow Foundation.

He has been and is currently member of different committes for agro-biodiversity at regional level.

He has been member of administrative committee of Marine protected area "Isole dei Ciclopi" as representative of Catania University (2014-2019).

He is among the founders of the Catania University spin-off “Agriunitech s.r.l.” that he also chaired since 2019 till 2022.

He is member of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences (ISHS) and of the International Society of Citriculture (ISC).

He joins the scientific board of the editorial series "Università e Formazione" of Edagricole. He is ordinary Academic of Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence (Italy), and correspondent Academic of the Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Belle Arti degli Zelanti e dei Dafnici of Acireale, Catania (Italy).

His research activities mainly deal with propagation, breeding, genetic resources characterization and post-harvest of fruit tree species.

He published more than 100 items indexed on SCOPUS. He also published as editor or coauthor some scientific books.

Catania, May 10, 2024