(Wines&Vines) - After a search process that lasted more than four years, Pennsylvania State University announced Dec. 9 that Dr. Michela Centinari would be the new research viticulturist in the Department of Plant Science. Her position, which will be 75% research and 25% extension, will be co-funded by the Pennsylvania Wine Marketing and Research Program and Penn State.

Dr. Centinari was awarded her Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Bologna, Italy, where she studied in the Department of Fruit Tree and Woody Plant Sciences. Her doctoral research looked at vineyard cover crops and specifically investigated the methods for measuring cover crop evapotranspiration and the effects of vineyard floor management practices on total vineyard water use. According to Dr. Centinari, her research “was designed to determine the reliability of available methods used to study cover crop water use, to analyze the relationship between vineyard cover crop water use and the climatic factors that drive evaporative demand, and to investigate the effect mowing has on the cover crop in terms of water use.”

For the past three years, Dr. Centinari has been a post-doctoral research scholar in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Her post-doctoral research has focused on the effect of grapevine root-zone management, including root pruning and cover crop competition, in improving fruit composition, wine quality and reducing production cost.