A DEEPER LOOK AT PLANTS AND HUMAN WELLBEING

PLANTSCI 350

Plants provide not only the foundation of food, clothing, and shelter essential for human existence, but also some of the key raw materials for transcendence and abstraction through music, art, and spirituality. Since antiquity, we have co-evolved with plants and their derivative products, with each exerting a domesticating force on the other. It is, for example, impossible to think of our modern life without its plant-based accompaniments in the form of cotton, sugar, bread, coffee, and wood. Yet they are so ubiquitous we may forget they all derive from plants discovered, domesticated, bred, and farmed for millennia in a never-ending pursuit to improve our wellbeing. Major points of intersection between plants and human wellbeing will be explored from a horticultural point of view by highlighting a plant or group of plants that represent a primary commodity or resource through which humans have pursued their own aims and explore effects and impacts on human society.

BOTANY 100

Major emphasis on the roles of plants and microbes in past and present global ecology, and the past and present uses of plants and microbes by humans, including emerging applications of biotechnology.

PLANTSCI 376

Highlights the connections between tropical plants and society. Topics include multidisciplinary reflections on the biology of tropical plants, as well as an overview of different production systems and some of the social and environmental problems associated with the utilization of tropical plants in the context of local and global markets. Provides the opportunity to demonstrate comparative skills with respect to local and international challenges posed by the topics we address in class. Illustrates connections between horticulture and conservation, food security, nutrition, and global health.

BOTANY 240

Plant parts and demonstrations of their utility to humans, origins of domesticated plants, modifications of plants by humans, ecosystem services owed to plants, and reasons to sustain plant diversity.

PLANTSCI 375

Special topics on issues relevant to plant sciences.