PLANT SC 7220WT - Foundations of Plant Health

This course involves teaching sessions that may be attended by both Undergraduate and Postgraduate students.

In this course, the interplay between the plant, environmental conditions and other organisms within the plant's environment will be explored with a particular emphasis on what organisms and abiotic stresses cause disease, how they cause disease, why that disease occurs and the economic, environmental and social implications of disease. Students will learn about resistance and tolerance strategies employed by the plants when challenged by biotic and abiotic stress. The subsequent induction of a wide variety of responses will be explored in this course and the use of this information to breed for tolerance and/or resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses will be discussed. The course also provides the biological information and background required to devise strategies to adapt to or avoid potentially crippling environmental stresses as well as to devise pest management strategies. Case studies on specific plant-pathogen interactions, plant-pest interactions, abiotic stresses, herbicide damage and interactions essential to plant health will be presented. The course will include a description of appropriate biometrical methods needed to design, summarise and analyse experiments and an introduction to the different forms of scientific communication available to present results to different target audiences.