How can plants help us cope with global challenges?
Life on Earth depends on solar energy captured by plants - they are the base of most food webs and underpin the functioning of all major ecosystems. Plants release the oxygen we breath. They convert solar energy into chemical energy, providing us with food, fibres, renewable energy sources, and raw materials for many industries. Plants do not carry out these processes in isolation. They interact with other organisms and the physical and chemical environment, communicate and actively adjust to their circumstances. How do they do these things at molecular, physiological and functional levels and how can we profit from understanding that?
When you have graduated from the Master’s Programme in Integrative Plant Sciences you will have the current answers, based on cutting-edge research by our scientists, to these big questions, and more.
Studying
The Master’s Programme in Integrative Plant Sciences is a joint programme of the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, which ensures an exceptionally comprehensive curriculum. You will be able to study the diversity of wild and cultivated plants from the Arctic to the Tropics, as well as plant functions from the molecular level, such as ontogeny and regulation of growth and differentiation, to the ecosystem level.
Why In­teg­rat­ive Plant Sciences?
When you have graduated from the Master’s Programme in Integrative Plant Sciences you will have the current answers, based on cutting-edge research by our scientists, to these big questions, and more, such as:
How one plant cell develops into a complicated organism and how plant cells, tissues and organs communicate with each other and regulate each others’ growth at molecular and physiological levels
How plants avoid, tolerate or defend themselves from external stress factors such as diseases, drought and excessive solar radiation, and adapt to their environment
How plants sense their environment and communicate with each other and with other organisms
How plants, interacting with microbes, fungi and animals, maintain ecosystems and thus life
How the genotypic, functional and morphological differences among plants allow them to thrive in vastly different habitats