Dr. Ines Ksentini, is an Assistant Professor working at the Olive Tree Institute in Sfax as Plant Protection researcher since 2012. Her research deals mainly with developing new biological control methods in order to manage insect pests infesting olive trees and other crop trees growing in the semi-arid areas of Tunisia. Dr. Ksentini has a long experience with insect parasitoids (e.g. Trichogramma) as well as olive insect pests.

In one former and one ongoing research project, she and her research team isolated entomopathogenic bacteria and fungi from olive tree insect pests (e.g. olive fly, olive moth, olive psyllid) and pomegranate pests (e.g.  carob moth, pomegrenate butterfly). Some of the isolated micro-organisms (i.e. the new bacteria strain Providencia entomiphila) have been indentified as a promising bioinsecticide against olive flies.