The University of Torino (UNITO) is one of the leading Italian public Universities with an international reputation for high quality teaching and research. UNITO is active at international level through involvement of its researchers in several projects with foreign partners, establishment of joint educational courses, such as bi-national degrees and international PhD programmes, through the subscription of formal cooperation agreements (roughly 450) with institutions around the world and active participation in internationalization projects for Italian universities.
UNITO participates with the Department of Agriculture, Forest and Food Science (DISAFA), established in January 2013 through the merging of the Faculty of Agriculture and her five Departments. At present, about 350 people are employed at the Department. Within DISAFA, the Crop Protection Technology Group (CPT) has been particularly active as a specialist topic within the Agricultural and Forest Engineering research area for more than 20 years. Their activities have led to great improvements being gained with pesticide application efficiency, operator safety and the minimization of their environmental impact.
The Plant Pathology Group (PPG-UNITO) has extensive experience in biology and epidemiology of plant pathogens of economically important crops as well in their management. It also has experience in DNA molecular marker technologies applied to detection of plant pathogens and biocontrol agents, fungicide resistance, development of pathogen diagnostics, risk analysis studies. Such expertise is currently applied in the field of crop biosecurity. Finally, it is actively involved in disease management, by adopting cultural, physical, biological and chemical measures.
