Sara Tedesco

I studied Rural Development Cooperation in Italy, volunteered in Sierra Leone and lived in close contact with Indian farmers during my BA thesis. There, I became familiar with the concept of sustainable development and matured sensibility for the challenges that humanity is facing so I decided I would become an agronomist to help people to grow out more efficiently and produce for their needs.

I moved to Portugal where I achieved a 2nd Bachelor and a Master degree in Agronomic Engineering, developing a special passion for perennial trees, a sector in which plant material for plantation constitutes an investment that will lasts several decades. I specialized in production systems and developed my Final MA thesis, as well as a scientific paper publication, in modeling water and nitrogen in Lisbon urban farms.

Since March 2015 I am holding a research grant under the project: PRODER 53593 - "Inov Cast - Innovation in chestnut production chain: competitiveness and sustainability" integrated in the Portuguese breeding program for chestnut resistance to ink disease and I take care of the propagation of new improved chestnut rootstocks. I love what I do, not only because there is no day in which I do not learn something new but also because I know that my work is needed and important for all those farmers that are facing economical injuries and are abandoning the orchards.

I recently got the opportunity to collaborate with the Agrifood research and technology center of Aragon (Spain) researching the graft compatibility of our improved chestnut hybrids mainly based on histology of in vitro calli and micrograft unions. Considering that graft incompatibility can manifests several years after the union, the aim is to early detect the compatibility trait of different graft combinations and thus to shorten the time it takes for improved genotypes to be ready for farmers.

October 2016