{"id":133929,"date":"2026-03-23T09:40:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T08:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irta.cat\/noticia\/a-lirta-tens-tot-un-entorn-que-tajuda-a-creixer-el-suport-sempre-hi-es-marta-balsells-membre-de-la-comunitat-alumni-de-lirta\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T10:14:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T09:14:28","slug":"entrevista-marta-balsells","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/www.irta.cat\/en\/noticia\/entrevista-marta-balsells\/","title":{"rendered":"“At IRTA, you have a whole environment that helps you grow: support is always there”: Marta Balsells, member of the IRTA Alumni Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How was your first contact with IRTA?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first contact with IRTA was through an internship during high school, in 2009. I spent two months at IRTA Mas Bov\u00e9 helping with research tasks in the monogastric animal nutrition laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After finishing my degree and master\u2019s, I returned with a position as a laboratory technician in the Postharvest program. My first contract was from April to September, but my time there eventually extended to two years. I really enjoyed doing hands-on lab work, but I felt something was missing… I was always left wondering about the follow-up of the results I obtained. Then the opportunity to do a PhD came up, I secured funding, and joined the pathology group in the Postharvest program at IRTA Fruitcentre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you remember your PhD years?<\/strong>
They were very good years professionally, but also personally. We were a large group and worked closely together, except for some tasks like data analysis or writing that I had to do alone\u2014but you always had everyone\u2019s support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the PhD students, we also formed a very strong bond. Many of us were from outside Lleida, and we spent time together outside of work as well. We were people of similar ages sharing the same concerns and experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also have very good memories of my supervisors, Josep Usall<\/a> and Charo Torres<\/a>. At the time, Josep was the head of the Postharvest program and later became IRTA\u2019s Director General during my PhD. With him, meetings were less frequent but very in-depth, while Charo provided more day-to-day guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also had the opportunity to mentor master\u2019s and undergraduate students, which helped me learn how to supervise others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was your PhD about?<\/strong>
My PhD<\/a> focused on brown rot, one of the most important diseases affecting stone fruit\u2014peaches, nectarines, plums. It is caused by a fungus called Monilinia<\/em>, and the main issue is that it attacks mostly during postharvest, when the fruit has already been picked and is being stored or distributed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thesis had two parts. The first was more practical: we wanted to understand whether light could influence how this fungus infects fruit. We studied nectarines exposed to different light intensities during storage\u2014since fruit, from harvest to consumer, passes through many artificially lit environments such as packinghouses, trucks, and supermarket shelves. All this exposure could affect how the fungus develops, and that\u2019s exactly what we wanted to understand. We also studied fruit that had been bagged during growth versus non-bagged fruit, to see if it influenced resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the colleague who continued the work after my PhD went a step further and studied how different light colors affect the process, aiming to build scientific evidence on how all types of light influence harvested fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, during a stay at the University of California, Davis, in the United States, I completed the second phase of my PhD. This consisted of a transcriptomic study analyzing how susceptible ripe and unripe fruit are to the fungus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One interesting thing I learned there was silent work sessions. We would spend an hour reading or writing, then discuss it for 20 minutes, and then go back to reading. It was a great dynamic that I even brought back to IRTA on several occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States wasn\u2019t your only international experience. Where else have you been?<\/strong>
My first experience abroad was through Erasmus during my undergraduate studies. I joined a research group at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. They conducted very basic and in-depth research on Arabidopsis<\/em>. What I saw there was a strong focus on precision and attention to detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After finishing my PhD, I did a fully international postdoc: 7 months in Patras, Greece, and 1 month in Limassol, Cyprus. There, I found research more similar to IRTA\u2019s, but I was especially struck by the strong motivation to secure projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve now been working at Agromillora for over two years. Can you tell us more about your current role?<\/strong>
Agromillora<\/a> is an international company that produces and distributes mainly rootstocks\u2014the lower part of the plant onto which varieties are later grafted. We work with stone fruit, olives, citrus, and recently, in some countries, berries. Everything except olives is produced in vitro, multiplying material clonally so that all plants are genetically identical to the mother plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I joined Agromillora, I had two responsibilities: managing the corporate R&D laboratory and coordinating two research projects. The lab focused on in vitro culture, with a team of four people working on experimental varieties and species\u2014everything still identified by codes, without commercial names\u2014optimizing propagation for future commercialization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to a corporate decision, the lab stopped being managed by Agromillora. From then on, I focused exclusively on research projects, which allowed me to take on more\u2014now I coordinate five projects in collaboration with public research centers, applicable across the company\u2019s global subsidiaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From lab bench to office\u2014how have you experienced this transition?<\/strong>
It\u2019s been very different. I used to combine both\u2014lab work in the morning and office work in the afternoon. Now I\u2019m always in the office, but it\u2019s a new phase where I\u2019m learning a lot and managing projects in ways I couldn\u2019t before. It has really broadened my perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organization, people management, supervising students, working with audits, coordinating experiments\u2014all the foundation I built at IRTA is what I apply every day now. Without that stage, I wouldn\u2019t be able to do what I do today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, what skills do you think are key for doing a PhD at IRTA, and what advice would you give to someone just starting?<\/strong>
In terms of skills, I would highlight three. First, manual skills\u2014lab work is very delicate and requires precision. Second, organizational skills, which are essential for managing lab tasks, writing, reading, meetings\u2014everything. Third, interpersonal and communication skills, because there will be times when you are responsible for others\u2014students, technicians\u2014and you need to manage those relationships effectively, both with them and with your supervisors. I would add a fourth: patience and calmness. Sometimes, they are essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As advice, I would say: be sure that you truly enjoy research, and be prepared for a rollercoaster. There will be days when everything goes well and days when everything goes wrong. But you won\u2019t be alone\u2014you\u2019ll have supervisors, colleagues, technicians, a whole environment that will support you. At IRTA, that support is guaranteed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":133931,"template":"","categoria_noticia":[],"etiqueta_filtrar_noticia":[11292],"class_list":["post-133929","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","etiqueta_filtrar_noticia-alumni-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n"At IRTA, you have a whole environment that helps you grow: support is always there": Marta Balsells, member of the IRTA Alumni Community » IRTA<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irta.cat\/en\/noticia\/entrevista-marta-balsells\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""At IRTA, you have a whole environment that helps you grow: support is always there": Marta Balsells, member of the IRTA Alumni Community » IRTA\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How was your first contact with IRTA? 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