BIO324 Plant Adaptation to Climate and Pollution

The course will provide broad knowledge on how plants respond, interact with and adapt to the abiotic environment. This includes short-term acclimation (how plants perceive environmental cues and adapt phenotypically) and adaptation at the longer time scales of evolution. The obtained knowledge will enable students to better understand how environmental conditions affects plant physiology in natural ecosystems, and how this knowledge can be used to increase agricultural efficiency (for example, through breeding) in managed ecosystems required for food production. The overall aim of the course is to give perspective and tools to address problems and possibilities related to plants and their growth and development in face of pollution and a changing climate.

Knowledge

• Can define and discuss the meaning of acclimation, phenotypic plasticity, evolutionary adaptation, stress, resistance, tolerance. Can give examples of such phenomena.
• Can describe and explain how temperature, water, light, CO2, salt and pollutants affect physiological processes, cause stress, and regulate growth and development. Can describe and explain interactions in the effects that these factors have on plants.
• Can describe and explain mechanisms that enable plants to cope with different types of abiotic stress.
• Can describe acclimation processes.
• Can describe and explain how climate change has affected species distribution, phenology, agricultural plant production up to now, and how it is projected to affect these things in the future.
• Can give examples of role that life strategy, acclimation, phenotypic plasticity and genetic variation has for natural plant populations, and plant breeding, in the face of climate change and pollution.

Skills

• Can read, understand and communicate scientific literature.
• Can take part in discussions of themes related to plants, climate and environmental stress with arguments based on scientific knowledge.

General competence

• Can use knowledge from this subject to solve problems in land-based plant production, plant breeding or nature management.
• Can use knowledge from this subject in advisory and informational activities, teaching and research.