Programs in plant science prepare people to raise healthy crops. Students learn the basic principles of soil chemistry and plant physiology. They study methods for breeding, cultivating, and caring for crops. They also learn to test and manage the nutrient content of soil so that it can produce healthy crops.
You may not know it, but you may already have dabbled with plant science in your lifetime. If you've ever made a mud pie, you were experimenting with one of soil's transforming powers. Mixed with water, soil can be formed into solid chunks of mud. You probably learned the hard way that those chunks don't taste so good. But as early as 10,000 B.C., people discovered that after letting the chunks dry in the sun, they could use them as bricks to build their first permanent shelters. At around the same time, people also began growing crops in soil.
In the last dozen or so millennia since those first "mud pies," plant scientists have come a long way. We now know much more about the properties of soil and the principles of growing plants, especially for harvesting. We have learned that soils need certain types of nutrition and balance in order to provide a healthy growing environment for plants.
As a student in this program, you take courses that help you to improve plant production while protecting the integrity and health of soils. As most gardeners will say, healthy soil equals healthy plants. Therefore, you learn to analyze soil in terms of chemistry, biology, and physics. You study the way that water travels through different soil types. You learn methods for improving the "fertility" of soil. This means that you learn to treat soil so that crop production can increase.
Besides needing healthy soil, plants also require other environmental factors to grow well. These factors include weather, the absence of pests and weeds, and the presence of related plants. For this reason, you also learn all about the structure of different plants. You study the ways that different plants reproduce and interact with their environment. You also learn how to help breed plants yourself, sometimes even making genetic changes to do so. These are just a few kinds of information that you study in this program.
As you might imagine, a background in plant science prepares you for a wide range of careers. In any situation where soil health, plant production, and crops are important, you can find a potential career. Several sample settings include nurseries, wetland conservation societies, farms, open ranges (where livestock feed), and even landscape architecture.
About 60 schools offer programs specifically in this field. In addition, most states have a land grant college that offers some sort of plant science program. You can typically earn a bachelor's, a master's, or a doctoral degree in this field. In general, a bachelor's degree takes four years of full-times study after high school, and a master's degree about one to two years after that. Beyond a master's degree, you usually need about three to five years to earn a doctoral degree.
A few two-year colleges offer certificate and associate degrees as well. In some cases, you may be able to transfer the credits from these programs to a four-year bachelor's degree program. A certificate typically takes about a year of full-time study after high school and an associate degree about two.