Francesca Sparvoli is Research Director at IBBA-CNR where she leads the BEAN Group lab. Her main interests are related to the improvement of the nutritional quality of legumes and cereals seeds applying biochemical, molecular and genetic approaches for the modification of bioactive components (nutritional and anti-nutritional). She has a longstanding knowledge of the main protein factors in bean seeds: characterization, gene organization and molecular evolution, influence on the nutritional characteristics of the seed and in the resistance to phytophagous insects. Her studies are aimed at developing new genetic materials for applications in human and animal nutrition. She is also interested in the addressing the regulatory mechanisms involved in the synthesis and deposition of phytic acid in seeds and role of phosphate inositol metabolism in the plant response to abiotic stresses. More recently, with her group she started to develop a platform for common bean functional genomics contributing with the development of a TILLING population and improving current protocols and approaches for common bean transformation and gene genome editing.