| TEXTS |
Taiz, L. and Zeiger, E. 1998.
Plant
Physiology. 2nd ed., Sinauer Associates
Inc
(Also Useful) Raven, PH, Evert, RF, and Eichhorn,
SE. 1998. Biology
of Plants. 6th ed., Worth Publishers Inc. |
| Exams:
There will be two mid-term exams held during
regular class time on October 4 and November 8.
The final exam will be taken during the exam period
and will mostly cover material from the last unit
with a few cumulative questions from lecture and
lab.
Labs: Some of the experiments done
in lab will extend over several weeks and require
you to make periodic observations and measurements.
Your findings from each experiment will be written
up in an abbreviated form in which you present
your results and discuss their significance. Thus,
your lab write-ups should essentially be equivalent
to what you would write in a combined results
and discussion section in a formal lab report.
Because of the open-ended nature of the experiments,
there will be no specific due dates for the lab
assignments, but you must turn them all in by
the last day of classes.
Research Projects: You will choose
2 recent articles (1994 to the present) describing
experiments on some aspect of plant growth. You
will use these articles as the basis for developing
your own research project during the last 3 weeks
of the semester. Obviously work on trees or an
exotic species wouldn't be suitable, but research
on seeds or seedlings of common crop plants such
a corn, oats, bean, tomato, etc. would be. Projects
which require more than 3 weeks of growth to see
results are probably too lengthy to attempt as
are projects that involve instruments we don't
have. We will have available the common growth
regulators, chemicals and greenhouse space. The
project you design could be trying the same research
on a different plant or introducing a variation
in the experiment. It doesn't have to be elaborate!
After selecting the papers, copy them and write
a brief proposal describing what the researchers
did and what you plan to do. You will turn in
the articles and your proposal on November 1.
On November 20 you will present a ~10 minute talk
on your research proposal in lab. On December
13, you will turn in a formal lab report discussing
your research findings.
The following journals specialize in studies
on plants and are available in the Williston Library:
Annals of Botany, American Journal of Botany,
Canadian Journal of Botany, The Plant Cell, Physiologica
Plantarum, Planta, Plant Physiology, International
Journal of Plant Science. Morrill Library at UMass
offers an even wider selection of plant biology
journals.
|
