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BIOSECURITY: ALIEN AND INTRACTABLE PESTS

Attività

Our research focuses on different aspects of crop protection, including the development of sustainable weed and pest management strategies, as well as securing plant and food biosecurity.

Research Objectives

Biosecurity and intractable species is one of the main research areas of three scientific teams dealing with crop protection. These are the Sustainable Weed Management team, the Plant and Food Biosecurity team and the Sustainable Pest Management team.

The Sustainable Weed Management team is operating since 1993 and has a distinguished experience in several areas of weed science, including eco-biology of weeds, crop-weed competition, allelopathy, herbicide resistance in weeds, environmental fate of herbicides and management of native and alien species.

The Plant and Food Biosecurity research team is operating since 2004 on the topics of plant and food biosecurity to develop strategies to respond rapidly in the event that pathogens are accidentally or deliberately introduced to crops and the agro-food supply chain, dealing with evaluation of the risk of deliberate introduction of plant pathogens; prevention and mitigation; emerging diseases (diagnostics, containment, eradication), bacterial human pathogens on plant products (HPOP).

The Sustainable Pest Management team has a long tradition of research in the field of biological control and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Over the years, investigators have set up and applied large-scale inoculative and inundative biological control programmes. Particular attention has been focused on exotic and emerging pests as well as on insect vectors of vegetable and fruit crops. The team has strong experience in the biology, epidemiology and occurrence of crop pests and their natural enemies, to implement the most suitable techniques to control pest outbreak.

Areas of Scientific Expertise

The Sustainable Weed Management team has been involved in several research projects funded by various institutions, including European Union, MIUR (Italian Ministry of University ad Research), CNR (Italian National Research Council), several Regional authorities (Piemonte, Lombardia, Umbria) and private companies operating in the field of weed management. The group coordinated the EU projects BICORER (biology and integrated control of red rice) and RICE-NET (EU-India rice districts network promotion). The group is responsible in Italy for the implementation of the European TOPPS-Prowadis project (Train Operators to Promote Practice and Sustainability; 2011-2014), aimed at developing and recommending Best Management Practices (BMP) to prevent and mitigate the risk of water pollution due to plant protection products runoff.

The Plant and Food Biosecurity team has been involved in several International and European research projects. On plant and food biosecurity it coordinated the following projects: “Crop and food biosecurity, and provisions of the means to anticipate and tackle crop bioterrorism” (FP6, 2004-2007); “Tools for Crop biosecurity” funded by NATO programme Security through Science (2007-2008); Tackling Biosecurity between Europe and Asia: innovative detection, containment and control tools of Invasive Alien Species potentially affecting food production and trade” funded by EU Asia-Link programme (2007-2010) and the FP7 running project “Plant and Food Biosecurity – PLANTFOODSEC” www.plantfoodsec.eu (2011-2016), a Network of Excellence project aiming to create develop the capability and capacity to prevent, respond and recover from a biological incident or deliberate criminal act threatening the European agrifood system. The groups is partner of FP7 Project “Seed health: development of seed treatment methods, evidence for seed transmission and assessment of seed health - TESTA” (2012-2016).

The Sustainable Pest Management team has been involved in several research projects funded by various institutions, including European Union, Italian Ministry of University ad Research (MIUR), Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MiPAAF), Italian National Research Council (CNR), several Regional authorities (Piemonte, Liguria, Valle d’Aosta Lombardia, Umbria) and private companies operating in the field of pest management. In particular, the group has been involved in projects aimed at investigating and evaluating the most effective strategies to contain the outbreaks of pests recently introduced into our country, such as: “Insects and globalization: sustainable control of exotic species in agro-forestry ecosystems” (GEISCA); “Strategies to reduce the spread and damage by Western Corn Rootworm Diabrotica virgifera virgifera in Italian maize crop” (IDIAM); Interreg III ALCOTRA (UE) Italia-Francia

Research Facilities

The Sustainable Weed Management team has access to several facilities to carried out its activities, including laboratories for chemical, physical and biological analyses, growing rooms, instruments for specific studies on vegetal tissues and soil and hydrologic studies. The group carries out research also in the Experimental Farm of the Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Science of the University of Torino, where a large set of facilities for field studies is available, as well as in private farms and in non-agricultural contexts.

The Plant and Food Biosecurity team has access to extensive facilities including laboratories (with state-of-the-art equipment in microscopy, molecular biology and chemical analysis), experimental fields and greenhouses and to two National Certified laboratories for testing agrochemicals efficacy, for Diagnostics of plant pathogens and to a new Centre for seed pathology.

The Sustainable Pest Management team has access to extensive facilities including laboratories equipped with instruments for microscope observations (stereo and optical microscopes, SEM, TEM) and molecular analyses (laminar flow hoods, refrigerated centrifuges, incubators, UV-Visible spectrophotometer, PCR and Real Time PCR thermal cyclers, UV transilluminator), climatic chambers and greenhouses for insect mass-rearing and experimental trials.

Research Group

Sustainable Weed Management team

Aldo Ferrero, team leader. He is a full professor of Weed science, Agronomy and Crop Science. He is the president of the Italian weed research society. He is in charge of the evaluation of herbicide dossiers, on the behalf of Ministry of Health, for their registration in Italy. He coordinates Medrice FAO network. He mainly deals with studies on crop-weed competition, herbicide resistance in weeds, environmental fate of herbicides and management of native and alien species.

Francesco Vidotto, assistant professor. He is the Italian national representative and additional board member of the European Weed Research Society (EWRS). He is also member of the Working Group on Invasive Alien Plant Species of the Regione Piemonte. eco-biology of weeds, allelopathy, environmental fate of herbicides and management of native and alien species.

Silvia Fogliatto, post-doc researcher. She received in a PhD degree in 2011, with a thesis on weedy rice biology. She spent a six-month period at the University of Arkansas, focusing her research on weedy rice seed dormancy. She mainly deals with eco-biology of weeds, herbicide resistance in weeds.

Marco Milan, PhD, post-doc researcher. He received a PhD degree in 2013 with a thesis on the behaviour of herbicides in runoff and percolated waters. He spent a nine-months period at the Plant Science Department at University of California, Davis and a period of three months at the research centre of Bayer CropScience at Monheim am Rheine, Germany. He mainly deals with herbicide resistance in weeds, environmental fate of herbicides.

Marilisa Letey, PhD student. She is spending a three-month period at the IRSTEA research centre, Lyon, France, focusing her research on the evaluation of different strategies to mitigate the runoff losses of herbicides in plain and hilly environments.

Fernando De Palo, fellowship holder. His activity is mainly focused on the definition of the mitigation measures to reduce pesticides pollution of surface waters from agricultural areas in the context of the European Project TOPPS-Prowadis.

Plant and Food Biosecurity team

M. Lodovica Gullino, Full professor of Plant Pathology, Immediate Past President of the International Society of Plant Pathology and consultant of Italian Ministry for the Environment on agro-environmental issues. Her research interests focus on plant disease management, biological and integrated control of diseases, crop biosecurity, effect of climate change on plant diseases and sustainable agriculture. She wrote 600 research papers, 180 feature articles and 16 books.

Massimo Pugliese, assistant professor. He works on compost and sustainable agricolture. He is author of several publications about the suppressive activity of compost against plant pathogens, biological control and innovative strategies for the control of alien and emerging soil-borne pathogens. He is also active in training activities and divulgation to the public about organic farming and compost.

Selma Franceschini, post-doc researcher. She holds a PhD in Plant Protection with a thesis on IPM containment strategies of Phythopthora cambivora on chestnuts. She is working on microbial ecology applied to plant pathology with either traditional and molecular techniques.

Walter Chitarra, post-doc researcher. He holds a PhD Degree in Agriculture, Forest and Food Sciences with a thesis on plant physiology. He is working on ecology and internalization of bacterial human pathogens on leafy vegetables.

Paola Colla is project manager. She holds a MS in Agricultural Science and she received a PhD degree in 2014 with a thesis on knowledge and technology transfer in sustainable soil disinfestation.

Sustainable Pest Management team

Alberto Alma, team leader. He is a full professor of General and Applied Entomology and director of the Scuola di Agraria e Medicina Veterinaria (SAMEV). He is scientific advisor and coordinator of national and international research projects in the entomological field. His scientific activity is documented by more than 250 scientific papers on indigenous and exotic insects of agricultural interest; vectors of phytopathogenic agents; implementation of environmental-friendly pest control techniques; development of biological control and biocontrol through the use of symbionts.

Luciana Tavella, associate professor of General and Applied Entomology. Her scientific activity is documented by more than 120 publications in national and international journals on the following topics of agricultural entomology: biology and epidemiology of native and exotic insect pests of recent importance; biology, behaviour and ecology of natural enemies and evaluation of their efficiency in controlling pest outbreaks; biological and integrated control of insects noxious to crops, mainly to vegetables; study on virus-vector relationships in the thrips-tospovirus system; taxonomy, biology, ethology and chorology of Heteroptera.

Rosemarie Tedeschi, assistant professor.

Chiara Ferracini, assistant professor. Her research interest focuses on population dynamics and spatial distribution of insects in urban environment, and on outbreaks of exotic pests in agricultural, forestry and ornamental fields. She is also active in training activities and dissemination of the results to scientists and stakeholders.

PhD students, Post-Docs and research technicians are members of this research group.

Ultimo aggiornamento: 20/04/2015 11:09
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