If gardening fascinates you and you like to grow new varieties of flowers and plants in your backyard, you will be surprised to know your hobby can shape up into a lucrative career option. All you need is right education and training for being Plant Scientist and related career opportunities.
A degree in Plant science prepare students for careers or further study in areas related to research or teaching about plants, or the growing of plants as food or fiber (field crops, vegetables, fruits or vineyards), turf grass, ornamental plant production, pest management, plant breeding, plant pathology and plant protection. You can work in diverse areas as per your area of interest or specialization.
Specializations
Plant Sciences is an appropriate base for working in:
- Agronomy (increasing crop yields)
- Botanical gardens
- Plant biotechnology (a growing field where researchers insert protective or nutritional genes into plants)
- Plant breeding (developing disease resistant and high yield plant varieties)
- Food science
- Forestry and natural resource management
- Horticulture (includes all work, commercially or scientifically, with flowers, vegetables, fruits, turf, and forestry)
- Floriculture (growing, marketing and designing with flowers) and gardening
- Wine production
- Landscape architecture
- Plant pathology (controlling diseases)
- Cooperative extension
- Garden writers and photographers or science journalism
- Ethnobotany and medicinal plants
Role of Plant Scientists
- Conduct research in different areas of agriculture.
- Provide information or recommendations to farmers or other landowners regarding ways in which they can best use land, promote plant growth, or avoid or correct problems such as erosion.
- Develop ways to improve the quantity and quality of field crops and farm animals.
- Create new food products and develop new and better ways to process, package, and deliver them.
- Study the composition of soil as it relates to plant growth.
- Communicate research findings to the scientific community, food producers, and the public
Skills Required to be Plant Scientists
Independent Thinking: Plant scientists should be able to work independently.
Oral and Writing Communications: To be able to communicate clearly and concisely to other team members and other scientists related to the project.
Basic Business Principles: Most of these scientists also need an understanding of basic business principles, the ability to apply statistical techniques.
Computer knowledge: Should have ability to use computers to analyze data and to control biological and chemical processing.
Plant scientists work with government departments in different capacity. Also job opportunities are available with private companies and NGOs. Many chose to work as researcher and teacher in academics. To start working as a Plant Scientist requires a minimum of graduate degree in Botanical Sciences/Agricultural Sciences/Environmental Sciences or similar. There is no shortage of institutions. You can find many universities and institutions across globe those offer Under Graduate and Graduate programmes in Plant Sciences.
Processing...