Professor:	Peter Melcher
Office:	CNS 255
Phone:	607.274.3980
E-mail:	pmelcher@ithaca.edu
Course Syllabus		Image source: Plants and Society (fith edition) Estelle Levetin and Karen McMahon, McGraw-Hill Publishers

Text Book:

Plants and Society, 5th Edition
Estelle Levetin and Karen McMahon
McGraw-Hill, ISBN-13 9780077221256

In this course you will learn about plants. Learning about plants is the central topic of this course. Plants provide humanity with all of our foods, either directly, or indirectly. Thus, you will learn how different types of plants grow and function (physiologically). To achieve this learning goal, you will learn some basic chemistry, plant anatomy, general physiology, energy and metabolism, the plant life cycle, and how the environment affects plant growth. Human population levels are currently at 6.5 Billion people. Projections indicate that these numbers will climb to an estimated 10 Billion people in the year 2050. It is believed that this dramatic increase in population will tax our planets ability to sustain life as we know it. Issues related to global and environmental sustainability, as well as, food production will be themes also discussed in this course. Thus, you will learn the basics of demography, agricultural food production (the major crops grown around the world) and a little about the various types of agriculture (sustainable agriculture, organic farming, traditional farming, and the use of plant biotechnology and genetic engineering in agriculture). At the end of the course we will briefly discuss the role of plants in human nutrition, medicine and psychoactive drugs. Lastly, even though fungi are not plants, they are really vital to our survival so you will learn a little about several really cool and important fungi.