Marcello Mele

MS-degree in Agricultural Science and PhD in Animal Science. He is full professor in Animal Science at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment of University of Pisa. Currently he is director of the Centro di Ricerche Agro-ambientali "E. Avanzi" of University of Pisa. In the last ten years his research activity was focused on 1) milk and cheese quality, with emphasis on fatty acid composition and on nutritional and functional properties of dairy fat; 2) meat quality and influence of feeding and farming systems on fatty acid composition of intramuscular fat, also adopting nutrigenetic approaches; 3) main factors affecting lipid oxidation; 4) effect of genetic and environmental factors on milk fat composition; 5) study of the effects of genetic polymorphisms on milk fatty acid composition; 6) lipid metabolism in the rumen as affected by feeding regimen, with emphasis on the use of dietary polyphenols; 7) sustainable livestock systems and mitigation of the environmental effects, with emphasis on methane emission.
Overall the research activity consisted of 108 research papers on ISI journals, accounting for mor than 1500 citations and resulted in an H index equal to 22 (at 30/09/2018).

Scientific responsibilities
From 2002 to present he participated to or coordinated several scientific study commissions for the National Association of Animal Science and Production (ASPA) below listed:
“Nutritional requirements of dairy ewes” (participant); “Analytical methods of lipid fraction of food of animal origin” (participant); “Safety and traceability of dairy production systems” (Co-coordinator); “Food of animal origin and human health” (Coordinator); “Ecological footprint and animal production” (participant).
From December 2011 to January 2012 he acted as expert reviewer for EU in the KBBE.2012.2.3-01 topic: Feed production from food waste.
From 2011 he is coordinator of the working groups of the Italian network for the research in organic agriculture.
From 2010 he is member of the editorial board of the ISI journal “Italian Journal of Animal Science” as section editor and, from 2013, also as deputy editor.
From 2013 he is the delegate of the University of Pisa at the Agri-food committee of Tuscany Region.
In the October 2015 he was selected from UE commission as expert in the Focus Group “Reducing Emission from Cattle Farming” for the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI; https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/node/1330).
In 2016 he was nominated member of the ASN (abilitazione scientific nazionale) commission.
From 2017 he is editor in chief of the ISI journal “Italian Journal of Animal Science”.
He acts as reviewer for several ISI journals: Journal of Dairy Science, Small Ruminant Research, Animal, Animal Feed Science and Technology, Journal of Dairy Research, Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics; Biochemical Genetics; Frontiers Veterinary Research.

He was responsible of several national and international research projects