Green Planet: Plants and the Environment (BOTA20001)

This subject examines the importance of plants for our planet and all life. It explores how plants capture energy and carbon in the biosphere, absorb almost all mineral nutrients that enter our ecosystem and underpin the global food supply, adapt to a wide range of environmental extremes and pathogens, and produce seeds and fruits that we consume. Weekly practicals allow hands-on experience with plants and involve experiments and discussion around light, nutrients and other factors affecting plant growth. Topics covered include: 

• Carbon: carbon metabolism within the plant as well as symbiotic microbiomes of the rhizosphere and soil; 
• Water: developmental and physiological strategies used by plants to take up water from soil, retain water in cells, and transpire water into the atmosphere; 
• Abiotic stress: how plants cope and adapt to salinity, high and low temperature and other environmental extremes; 
• Nutrition: essential elements for plant growth, plants as part of the global nutrition cycle, biofortification to produce nutrient-enriched food; 
• Biotic interactions: plant pathogens and mechanisms that plants have developed to fight them; 
• Seeds and fruits: flower development, pollination and fertilization 

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

• Relate plant structure and function to the physical environment;
• Demonstrate how fundamental knowledge of plant structure and function is critical to our understanding of major global processes such as climate change, nutrient cycles and plant-pathogen interactions;
• Examine how plants adapt to natural environments and how they can be modified to survive in new environments and/or provide new products;
• Describe environmental issues that impact on plants in Australia; and
• Communicate scientific findings in both written and oral format.

Generic skills