Raffaella Balestrini currently works at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection, Italian National Research Council. She mainly contributes to elucidating different aspects related to the interface creation in mycorrhizal symbioses and, by applying a laser microdissection (LMD) approach, she contributed to obtaining new knowledge on the cell-specificity in arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) roots. Her interests included studying crop responses to environmental stresses and the role of root-associated microorganisms in tolerance and resilience through cellular and molecular approaches (mainly transcriptomics), including the application of laser microdissection to verify gene expression profiles in homogeneous cell-type populations. She has 147 publications with 6446 citations and an h-index of 40 (Scopus, 2 November 2023).