PLSCI 4050

Physiology of Crop Productivity

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

This course provides knowledge on how crop ecophysiological traits and processes determine crop productivity and yield under real-world environmental conditions. This course integrates traits and processes across scales-from cellular mechanisms to whole-plant performance and crop-level outcomes. Students will learn how to link solar energy capture, resource uptake and use efficiency, and biomass partitioning with crop growth and yield and evaluate how environmental conditions like light, water, temperature and soil impact these relationships. The course is organized around core physiological processes and integrates recent findings from crop science, horticulture, plant physiology and molecular biology, ecology, and genomics/breeding. Examples and primary literature span a wide diversity of crop species and highlight how fundamental principles translate to crop performance and products essential to human society.

Last 4 Terms Offered (None)

Learning Outcomes

• Describe, interpret and integrate cellular- and organismal-level plant traits and processes to explain crop performance and responses to environmental conditions.
• Communicate to professional and lay audiences the impacts of weather, climate, and soil factors on crop production.
• Design experiments for both field and climate-controlled settings and identify tools to be used.
• Formulate scientific questions as testable hypotheses based on current knowledge and available resources.
• Critically evaluate and debate the biological and ethical implications of advances in plant science, particularly in genetic engineering and climate change.
• Explain how crop ecophysiological research can help improve crop production under climate change and increasing human population pressures. Learning outcomes for the graduate level (in addition to undergraduate learning outcomes)
• Outline research projects to investigate basic aspects of crop growth and development using ecophysiological approaches.
• Evaluate existing knowledge in crop ecophysiology topics, propose experimental approaches to address research questions, and discuss how to interpret and evaluate data.

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