Pace Roberta

RESEARCH FELLOW
roberta.pace(AT)ipsp.cnr.it
06.4993.27829
publications: Orcid
personal details and research activity: People
Curriculum Vitae

Graduated with honours in Forestry and Environmental Sciences at the Department of Agriculture of the University of Naples Federico II with an master thesis in Nature Conservation on the dispersal strategy of the seeds of Primula palinuri Petagna.
Since 2019 I participated in several research topics that relate to the “Urcofi Project” (Regional Unit of Coordination and strengthening of the activities of surveillance, research, experimentation, monitoring and training in Phytosanitary field). The main lines of research concern the biological and integrated control of harmful insects to agricultural and forestry crops.
From 2019 to 2021 thanks to a scholarship I had the opportunity to deepen the study and research on biology and related antagonists of invasive species and I was involved in monitoring, carried out with a network of trapping, on the territory of Campania Region. I also sampled some olive groves in Campania of the main vectors of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa and I was involved in the molecular diagnosis for detection of the bacterium within the phytophages sampled.Another activity concerned the rearing of a parasitoid, Baryscapus silvestrii, Hymenoptera Eulophidae, on a substitute host, the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata, for its possible use in biological control programmes.
Since 2019 I have supported the Plant Health Service of the Campania Region in the inspection of plant material entering the BCPs.I am currently a research fellow under the scientific responsibility of Dr. Massimo Giorgini, for the biological monitoring and control of the invasive phytophagous Drosophila suzukii. The main activities in the field are the monitoring and sampling of the little fruits in sites susceptible for D. suzukii. In the laboratory, in addition to the morpho-molecular characterization of the sampled phytophages, I am developing effective rearing techniques for obtaining the specific parasitoid of D. suzukii, Ganaspis brasiliensis, for biological control purposes.