Born in Grosseto on 7 October 1941, he is an alumnus of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. He graduated in Agriculture at the University of Pisa in 1964, became a university assistant in 1968, associate professor of Plant physiology in 1974 and full professor in 1981. Abroad, he worked at Michigan State University, East Lansing (U.S.A.), from 1969 to 1971 and at the University of California, Santa Cruz (U.S.A.), in 1979-1980. He was Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Pisa from 1995 to 2002 and co-ordinator of several CNR research projects, and he took part in the European projects of Framework Programmes IV, V and VI. He served as Acting Director of the CNR Institute for Virus and Biosynthesis in Plants in Milan in 1975 and of the CNR Institute for Mutagenesis and Differentiation in Pisa in 1998-99. He has been a member of several committees of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, President of the Italian Society of Plant Physiology (1985-1989) and President of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Physiology (1998-99).