Mario Di Guardo

Mario Di Guardo was born in Catania on December 25, 1986.

Since 2022 he has been a Researcher on fixed-term contract (art. 24 c.3-b L. 240/10) of General Arboriculture and Tree Crops (AGRI-03/A) at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Catania. Lecturer in “Quality of fruit products” in the framework of the Bachelor in Catering and Logistic Science and Technology of the Mediterranean Food (L26) and the course “Managing biological data with R: applications for plants and fruit tree species” in the framework of the doctoral schools in Agricultural Food and Environmental Science and Biotechnology.

He graduate in Agricultural Science and Technology (L25) at the University of Catania and in Agricultural Biotechnology (LM7) at the University of Florence. He has been a doctoral student at Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands) and the Edmund Mach Foundation (San Michele all'Adige, Trento). In 2017, he received his PhD degree from Wageningen University and Research with a thesis entitled:” Investigating the fruit texture genetic control in apple and its interplay with the production of volatile compounds using multi-family based analysis and genome wide association mapping.”

In 2018 and 2019, the doctoral thesis was awarded with the Soenen Prize (Foundation Professor Albert Soenen), Prosperitati Publicae Augendae Prize (accedemia dei Georgofili, international section), Mario Bonsembiante Prize (Istituto Veneto di Science, Lettere ed Arti) and AISSA Prize.

The research activities concern issues related to the scientific disciplinary field AGRI-03/A and have mainly focused on bioinformatic analysis of genomic and transcriptomic data for the study of regulatory mechanisms of traits of agronomic interest in Mediterranean tree species (citrus, grapevine, carob, almond) and for the identification of molecular markers aimed at the development of marker-assisted selection plans.

He has participated in numerous national and international research projects and is the principal investigator of the project DEciphering the molecular MEchanism of powdery mildew defense response in grapevine ThRrough a multi-omic Approach - DEMETRA, PRIN 2022 PNRR call.

He is a member of the board of the PhD Program in “Biotechnology” at the University of Catania and has been tutor or co-tutor of three PhD students.

He is a founding member of the university spin-off “Agriunitech s.r.l.” and is a member of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences (ISHS), and the Society of Italian Horticulture (SOI).

He has participated as a speaker at 17 national or international conferences and has co-authored 48 scientific publications in ISI and/or Scopus indexed journals.  

He is a member of the editorial board of the journals 'Frontiers in Horticulture' and 'BMC plant biology', and has been guest editor of four special issues for the journals 'Genes' (2), 'Agricolture' and 'Plants'. He has also refereed manuscripts proposed for publication in several international ISI/WOS and Scopus indexed journals such as 'Plant Biotechnology Journal', 'Journal of Experimental Botany', 'Horticultural Research' and 'Postharvest Biology and Technology'.

Last edit: 05/10/2024