Education and training

Present: Junior Researcher at FEM, PNNR AGRITECH
Ph.D. in Agricultural Genetics. C3A Università di Trento and FEM (IT)
Master’s degree in Industrial Biotechnology, Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca (IT)
Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology, Università degli Studi di Milano (IT)

Research activity

During her bachelor’s degree PB did an internship at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES), focused on the optimization and application of bioinformatic tools for the study of metabolic networks.
For the internship of her master’s thesis PB took part in the ELLAGIBIOSYN NUTRI project (Marie Curie actions) at FEM for the improvement of the nutraceutical antioxidant effects of strawberry and raspberry through the identification and characterization of genes responsible for the biosynthesis of gallic acid.
Subsequently, she had a year and a half experience as lab technician for the Grapevine Breeding and Genetics Unit at FEM, mainly focused on Marker-Assisted Selection (MAS).
Finally, during her PhD PB studied the resistance to black rot disease of grapevine, investigating the genetic origin of the trait through phenotyping analysis, SNP-based genetic linkage mapping and association studies. The research work had led to identification of the genomic region associated with black rot resistance of bunch and the development of new molecular markers for Marker-Assisted Breeding (MAB).

Current project

Now PB is working on the genetic characterization of FEM germplasm collections oriented to the identification of sustainable quality traits and to the development of FAIR databases. The assembly and exploration of the genome of an important reference variety for FEM breeding complete the objective of this project.