Marco Landi

Born on July 5, 1983 in Pisa (Italy), in 2010 Marco Landi graduated in Microbial and Vegetable Biotechnologies at the University of Pisa (110/110 cum laude). In 2013 (8 months), he was a visitor at the Victoria University of Wellington (Wellington, NZ) where, under the supervision of Prof. Kevin Gould, he conducted some experiments related to his PhD project. In 2014, he obtained a PhD in Plant Science (University of Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies joint PhD Program in Crop Science), with a dissertation: “Can anthocyanins photoprotect purple genotypes of Ocimum basilicum L. against boron toxicity and high light?” (SSD AGR/13; Advisor: Dr. Lucia Guidi). In 2016 he obtained the National Scientific Qualification (ASN) as Associate Professor (SSD AGR/13 sector 07/E1). In July 2019 he won a Research Assistant position (RTDa) at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Pisa.
Dr. Landi scientific interest is mainly focused on the structural, biochemical, molecular and physiological mechanisms through which plants accommodate environmental stress. Recent projects have included: (i) photoprotective role of anthocyanins and flavonoids sensu lato in plants under environmental stress (high light, UV-B, mineral toxicity); (ii) optical models to assess the development of anthocyanin-metal bond; (iii) physiological mechanisms adopted by Mediterranean tree species, including fruit tree species, against high levels of tropospheric ozone, drought, salinity, mineral toxicity (e.g. boron, NaCl). Another line of research concerns the evaluation of bioactive compounds in crop species typical of the Mediterranean area when subjected to different pedo-climatic/agronomic/post-harvest factors, with the aim to increase their nutraceutical values and shelf life. Most recently, Dr. Landi has started to characterize the bioactive profile of Mediterranean wild edible species in an attempt to select some of them as new functional foods.
The scientific activity is documented by more than 85 research or congress papers, 60 of them published on peer-reviewed journals (56 indexed in Scopus; H-index 14; citations > 600). Editor-in-Chief of ‘American Journal of Agricultural and Biological Sciences’ since 2015, Associate Editor of ‘Photosynthetica’ and ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’ since 2016, Dr. Landi has edited several special issues in high-rank journals as ‘Plants’, ‘Molecules’, ‘Agronomy’, ‘Frontiers in Plant Science’ and was the Guest Editor of the book ‘Metal Toxicity in Higher Plants’. He also acts as referee for high-rank journals, including New Phytologist, Plant Cell Environment, Environmental Experimental Botany, Planta, Science of the Total Environment. Dr. Landi was also invited speaker in international congresses and his PhD thesis was awarded by the Italian Society of Agricultural Chemistry (SICA) in 2015 and by CNR in 2016 as the best PhD thesis.
Dr. Landi is a member of SICA since 2014 and the Italian Society of Photobiology since 2015. He participated in some national project (PRIN 2010-2011; Progetti di Ricerca di Ateneo (PRA) 2015, 2017) and in 2019 he was the Principal Investigator for the project: “Phenotyping of red-leafed species to reveal the role of anthocyanins in resistance to metalloid and metal toxicity” developed to the Slovak Plant Screen Phenotyping Unit (SPPU, Nitra, SK) financed by the European Plant Phenotyping Network (EPPN 2020). He was the external referee of several international projects and participated as external examiner for international PhD thesis.
As teaching experience, he has actively collaborated to the final projects of several degree-students and PhD students, he has served as assistant in teaching “Analytical techniques in plant biochemistry” (2013-2019; 30 h/year; University of Pisa) and from 2019 he has responsible for the teaching “Use and recycle of biomasses” (60 h/year; University of Pisa).