Ana Elisa RATO. Completed the Doutoramento in Agronomia in 2009/03/27 by Universidade de Évora, Mestrado in Curso de Mestrado em Fruticultura, Horticultura e Plantas ornamentais in 1996/02/01 by Universidade de Lisboa Instituto Superior de Agronomia and Licenciatura in Ciências de Engenharia - Engenharia Agronómica in 1991/12 by Universidade de Lisboa Instituto Superior de Agronomia. Is Assistant Professor in Universidade de Évora. Published 17 articles in journals. Organized 3 event(s). Participated in 3 event(s). Supervised 2 PhD thesis(es). Supervised 4 MSc dissertation(s) e co-supervised 1. Supervised 8 work(s) of course completion of LSc/BSc. Participates and/or participated as Principal investigator in 1 project(s) and Researcher in 8 project(s). Works in the area(s) of Agrarian Sciences with emphasis on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries with emphasis on Agronomy. My research field is preharvest physiology and fruit ripening of major Mediterranean crops. Particularly, my research seeks new methodologies to evaluate the impact of some cultural practices, such as nutrition and irrigation, in fruit quality. One of the major goals of my research is to understand the influence of calcium in fruit postharvest behaviour, exploring ionic antagonism, the effect of this cation in the cell walls and its role in fruit postharvest disorders. My research extends to areas of analytical chemistry with the quantification of quality parameters in fruits, like soluble solids content, acids evolution after harvest and the quantification of ethylene and carbon dioxide production rate and determination of cell walls composition through chromatographic techniques. One of the recent goals of my research is the use spectral techniques like FT-NIR to analyse fruit quality parameters, such as polyphenols, anthocyanins, antioxidant activity. Also the use of multivariate techniques applied to spectroscopy has been recently addressed in my research. All of my research is developed under the guidelines of MED (Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development) in the Food Science and Technology Group in the Postharvest and technology laboratory, which I am responsible since 2016. I supervise undergraduate and graduate students (MsC and PhD students) in their dissertation work and I also cooperate with postdoctoral fellowships from around the world in current projects and activities of Postharvest and technology laboratory. In my research, apart from the achievements directed related with research outcomes, visible in the scientific publications, I give a strong emphasis to cooperation with private companies and regional producers.