Supervisors: Prof. Elisa Pellegrini, Prof. Cristina Nali
Research field: Plant Pathology
Research interests: Grapevine, Fungicide, Biocontrol
Plant Pathology Lab, University of Pisa, Via Vecchia di Marina 20, 56122, San Piero a Grado (PI)
giulia.scimone@phd.unipi.it
Giulia is a PhD student at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (DAFE), University of Pisa. She graduated in October 2022 in “Agri-food Production and Agro-ecosystems Management” at the University of Pisa discussing a thesis related to plant pathology discipline. In November 2022, she started a PhD course in Agriculture, Food and Environment with a project entitled “Investigation of the mechanisms of action of natural bioactive compounds: antifungal activity and induction of plant defence responses” at the Plant Pathology laboratory of DAFE, University of Pisa, co-funded by KWIZDA Agro GmbH. The aim of the PhD project consists in testing bioactive compounds on Vitis vinifera cv Sangiovese plants grown under controlled and field conditions, inoculated with grapevine major pathogens, and to verify if their application induces defence responses by the evaluation of hormonal mechanisms, and identify defence-related genes which play a pivotal role in grapenive’s adaptive response. For her research, she principally performs identification of plant pathogens (using stereo-microscope and optical microscope), ecophysiological (gas exchange and chlorophyll a fluorescence approaches), and biochemical analyses (through high performance liquid and gas chromatography of primary and secondary metabolites, spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric techniques).