Agricultural Biotechnology |
8) | Plant Tissue and Cell Culture | LSC AB 630 | This course offers an overview of different techniques of in vitro plant cell, tissue and organ culture its application in agriculture, horticulture as well as industrial and pharmaceuticals field of biotechnology. The course covers laboratory organization, different culture techniques, media component, different micropropagation techniques, bioreactor, variation, cryopreservation and artificial somatic seed development. Students gain hands-on experience by experimental approaches of plant tissue culture technology that include media preparation, explants isolation and culture following different techniques, plant regeneration and acclimatization of tissue culture developed plants. |
9) | Plant Molecular Biology | LSC AB 631 | This course concentrates on the detailed understanding and applications of molecular biology techniques for gene isolation, plant transformation and the investigation of gene function in plants. The course will also emphasize the application of genetic manipulation as applied to agriculture, including the manipulation of phenotypic traits such as stress resistance, herbicide resistance and microbial resistance to enhance crop qualities. The experimental part of this course will provide hands-on experience on media preparation, DNA isolation, gene cloning, transformation, DNA and RNA isolation from plants, sequence analysis using public databases, primer designing and bioinformatics. |
10) | Plant Biochemistry | LSC AB 632 | This course content is designed to give a clear picture of the mechanisms of energy flow from the environment to plants, how this energy is used to take up water, carbon dioxide and other nutrients from soil and how resources are transported and other physiological activities in plants at molecular level. The course amis to how the intermediary metabolism in plants that is related to plant cell structure and function. Topics to be covered are bioenergetics, cell walls, membrane, cell organelles, different physiological processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, metabolism of carbohydrates, lipid, amino acids, nucleotides, nitrogen, sulfur, secondary products etc, their functions, biological membrane transport, role of hormones and other growth factors in growth and development of plants. |
11) | Environmental and Stress Plant Physiology | LSC AB 633 | This course Examines the ability of plants to endure the challenges of changing environmental conditions. The mechanism of stress tolerance by avoidance or by adopting specific ways is the matter of discussion. The effect of various environmental stresses such as cold, drought, salt, heat, minerals, freezing, flooding on the regulation of plant metabolic pathways and the modification in physiological processes will be evaluated. This course will also address the strategies employed to minimize the effects of environmental stresses on plant growth and yield and the genetic manipulation of metabolic pathways of plants to develop plants that are more resistant. |
12) | Plant Breeding and Population Genetics | LSC AB 634 | This course cover the different plant breeding methods used to improve the quality of plants and to solve the problem of disease and insect pest susceptibility, some post harvest management, long-term storage, and environmental stress susceptibility. This course concentrate on different methods of hybridization, traditional methods of selection and hybrid analysis based on morphological and biochemical method at the same time it introduces students with molecular markers and marker-assisted selection to modernize the plant breeding technology in the current path of research to identify specific gene or genes at functional level. This course also introduces population genetics that cover population and gene pool, genetic structure, gene frequencies in population, genetic map, in the population and simple statistical analysis of population data. |
13) | Plant Genetic Engineering and Genetically Modified Plants | LSC AB 635 | The course covers the basic dependent nature of plant tissue culture and genetic engineering on plant tissue culture, role and application of recombinant DNA technology in crop improvement program, gene cloning, transformation vectors, techniques of gene transfer in plants, production of GM plants in different aspects such as to improve crop quality, crop quantity, biotic and abiotic stress resistance, herbicide resistance, different methods of molecular analysis of transgenic plants, risk and cost management, public concern and bioethics. The course provides hands-on experience of basic methodology of plant genetic engineering and gene transfer to plants by Ti plasmid through agrobacterium-mediated method. |
14) | Plant, Soil and Microbe Interactions | LSC AB 636 | This course concentrates on the use of biotechnology to enhance the interactive relations of microorganisms to improve soil fertility and productivity of plants. Topics covered include pathogenic, parasitic, saprophytic and symbiotic relations between microbes and plants, the cycles of plant nutrients in the soil, use of biotechnology-derived methods to improve soil fertility, reduce pathogenicity of soil-borne pests, and increase plant production. |
15) | Agricultural Ecology | LSC AB 637 | This course addresses the effect of agricultural practices on the environment by utilizing actual case studies to investigate the interaction of the agriculture and the environment. Topics include sustainable agriculture, land degradation, deserification, soil and water pollution with agricultural, chemicals and management of agricultural resources. |
16) | Medicinal Plants and Biopharmaceuticals | LSC AB 638 | This course provide a survey of medicinally important plants, isolated chemical compounds from plant parts, their method of isolation, identification, role of plant secondary metabolites in pharmaceutical industry, their culture method b traditional means and tissue culture. This course concentrates on recent status of transgenic plants as factories of biopharmaceuticals and importance of biopharm and molecular pharming for manufacturing biotech drugs. The course covers the recent role of biofarm for production of wide range of therapeutic recombinant proteins, wide range of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, drugs, and important molecules. |
17) | Selected Topics in Plant Biotechnology | LSC AB 649 | The most advanced topics, major achievements in plant biology both fundamental and applied research, current research topics covering recent trends in plant biotechnology research will be introduced. The design and content of this course is to be recommended by the academic advisor. |