Pomology/Fruits & Nuts: Stone fruits

Postharvest Physiology, Biochemistry, Systems Biology, Molecular biology, Fruit development, and ripening

Macarena Farcuh earned both her B.S. and her M.S. in agricultural sciences at the University of Chile, Santiago. She has several years of experience working with industry and as a research associate facilitating the collaboration between academia and industry partners. She earned her Ph.D.  in the Horticulture and Agronomy Graduate Group at UC Davis, September 2017.

Her research interests are focused on the improvement of the overall quality of fresh fruits before and after harvest. Throughout her Ph.D. she has been working on deciphering key mechanisms that underlie fruit metabolism. Understanding these has helped her identify central elements that determine different aspects of overall fruit quality, including flavor, nutritional value, and shelf-life capacity. For achieving her goal she uses a Systems Biology approach, encompassing an interdisciplinary concept, including areas such as fruit development and ripening, fruit postharvest biology/physiology, fruit quality and fruit nutritional value complemented with biochemistry, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and breeding.