Giovanni Caruso

Giovanni Caruso completed his PhD at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Pisa in 2010 with a thesis entitled “Soil water availability effects on gas exchange, fruit growth, yield components and oil quality of olive trees (cv. Frantoio)”. He is currently Researcher at the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences of the University of Pisa and his research activity focuses on the physiology of fruit trees and orchard management, with particular emphasis on olive. Specific research topics in olive growing are: irrigation, soil management, fruit physiology and oil quality. Other investigations included the monitoring of carbon fluxes in a fully-productive olive orchard under different soil management systems. In 2017 he spent two months at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS-CSIC) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) as research fellow taking part at activities dealing with the ecophysiology of fruit trees and calibration of the model OliveCan. Recent works include the use of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for the estimation of the biophysical and geometric parameters of grapevines and olive trees. He published more than 100 scientific articles (37 Scopus indexed) in national and international journals and he is co-author of one chapter of the book “l’Ulivo” (Bayer Crop Science).
In 2016 Giovanni Caruso was awarded the prize “Premio di studio Claudio Vitagliano” for the scientific article entitled “long-term evaluation of yield components of young olive trees during the onset of fruit production under different irrigation regimes” and since 2017 he is member of the “Accademia Nazionale dell’Olivo e dell’Olio”. In 2018 he obtained the national academic qualification as associate professor and since 2019 he is the coordinator of the working group “Olive and Oil” of the Italian Society of Horticultural Science (SOI, Società dell’Ortoflorofrutticoltura Italiana) and the head of the “Precision Fruit Growing Lab” of the Department of Agriculture Food and Environment at the University of Pisa. He partecipated in various research and technology transfer projects focused on modern management (Unaprol, Reg. CE n. 1220/11 recante modifiche al Reg. 867/08), carbon balance (MIUR-PRIN 2008, “Carbon cycle in fruit tree ecosystems”) and integrated pest management in olive orchard (SIDIO – “Strategie innovative per la difesa integrata in olivicoltura - ARSIA Regione Toscana”). He is currently the principal investigator for the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences of the project "MOLITO - Nuovi modelli olivicoli in Toscana " in the PIF "Olio Toscano per davvero" (PSR 2014-2020 Regione Toscana), the project "CATChCO2-live, olive grove Contrast and Adaptation To Climate Change "(PSR 2014-2020 Regione Toscana) and of the privately-supported project with NETAFIM Italy entitled “Individuazione di protocolli irrigui per l’olivo, la vite e il nocciolo finalizzati ad una più rapida entrata in produzione, all’incremento delle produzioni, al miglioramento qualitativo del prodotto e al risparmio idrico”.