Plants and Humans-ppt

Botany (Plant Biology) as a scientific endeavor

• Botany or biology did not progress much during the "dark ages" until the 16th and 17th century.
• With the invention of the microscope, Robert Hooke discovered that plant tissues were composed of cells (in fact he coined the word "cell")
• As explorers brought new plants back to Europe, the study of plants intensified, with plants being organized into groups and named by taxonomists.
• Botany or Plant Biology became composed of subdisciplines:
• plant taxonomy and biogeography
• plant physiology
• plant ecology
• plant morphology, anatomy, and developmental biology
• plant cytology (cell structure and function)
• plant genetics
• ethnobotany and economic botany
• genetic engineering - for crop improvement, insect repulsion, soil reclamation, longer shelf-life of fruits, disease resistance, etc.
• TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: The field of botany is a culmination of many historical events and consists of many different scientific disciplines.

The Nature of Scientific Inquiry

• Science is an organized system of knowledge obtained by a special method, the "scientific method", of research and aimed at explaining the causes and behavior of the natural universe.
• The "scientific method"
• Establish a problem or question based on observation
• Hypothesis - "educated guess" to answer the question or explain the problem.
• Experimentation - to determine if the hypothesis is valid.
• prediction
• test
• Conclusion

References

• Barigozzi, C. 1986. The Origin and Domestication of Cultivated Plants. Developments in agricultural and managed-forest ecology, 16. 218 pp. Elsevier, Amsterdam. Dorofeyev, V.F. 1992. N.I. Vayilov. Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants (English). 498 pp. University Press, cambridge. Hancock, J.F. 1992. Plant Evolution and the Origin of Crop Species. 305 pp. Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Rindos, D. 1984. The Origins of Agriculture. An evolutionary perspective. Academic Press, Florida. Vavilov, N.I. 1926. Studies on the Origin of Cultivated Plants. 248 pp. Leningrad. Zhukovsky, P.M. 1982. World Genofund of plants for breeding. Mega-gene centers and endemic microcenters. Dictionary of cultivated plants and their regions of diversity A.C. Zevin and J.M.J. de Wet (eds) 259 p. Center for agricultural publishing and Documentation Waneningen.
• Internet: http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/ecol438/vavilov.html (Accessed 8-28-2007)