Autor: Gustavo Santoyo

Gerado Puopolo is Associate Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Trento, Italy. He received his Ph D from the University of Naples „Federico II”, Italy and spent several years as Post-Doc and researcher at this university and Edmund Mach Foundation. The finding of novel sustainable strategies for the control of plant pathogens represents the core of his research. He focused on the characterisation of fungal and bacterial biocontrol agents belonging the genera Ampelomyces, Bacillus, Pseudomonas and Trichoderma. He has studied bacterial biocontrol agents belonging to the genus Lysobacter, selecting and characterising L. capsici AZ78, one of the few biocontrol agents effective agaist Phytophthora infestans and Plasmopara viticola, respectively causal agents of potato late blight and grapevine downy mildew, two devastating disease worldwide. His works helped finely dissect the mode of action of Lysobacter biocontrol agents and the development of a new biospesticide with a Lysobacter strain as main active ingredient.