Mario Di Guardo

Fixed-term Assistant Professor (RTDB) of Arboriculture and Fruitculture [AGRI-03/A]

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 of the University of Catania. Lecturer in “Fruitculture” in the framework of the Master in “Agricultural science and technology” (LM69) and the course “Managing biological data with R: applications for plants and fruit tree species” as part of the doctoral schools in Agricultural Food and Environmental Science, and in Biotechnology.

He got a Bachelor of Science degree in “Agricultural Science and Technology” (L25) from the University of Catania and a Master degree in “Agricultural Biotechnology” (LM7) from the University of Florence. He won a joint PhD fellowship at the Wageningen University and Research (The Netherlands) and the Edmund Mach Foundation (San Michele all'Adige, Trento). In 2017, he earned  the PhD degree from the 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 topic related to the scientific sector 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 and for traceability.

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

He is a board member of the PhD Program “Biotechnology” at the University of Catania and he was the 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 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

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