Agriculture

This course serves as an introduction to the fundamental principles of botany and explores the diversity, form, and function of vascular and nonvascular plants. It will provide a modern and comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of botany while retaining the important focus of natural selection, analysis of botanical phenomena, and diversity. Students are first introduced to topics they are more familiar with such as plant structure. The course will proceed to those topics which are less familiar including plant physiology and development and conclude with topics that are likely least familiar to the introductory student like genetics, evolution, and ecology.

This course provides lab-based training in botany and applies the principles taught in AGR 105, Botany lecture. The students will have the opportunity to conduct hands-on activities associated with plant anatomy and morphology, metabolism, classification, genetics, plant diversity, and plants and their relationships to humans.

Hydroponics is the science of growing plants in a soilless, biologically-controlled and ecologically-balanced environment. Though hydroponics is not a new method for the cultivation of crops, it is an evolving science. Hydroponics typically suggests the methods of plant propagation in water. However, it can be more properly referred to as soilless plant cultivation, which includes any method of growing plants without the use of soil as a rooting medium. Inorganic nutrients needed by the roots are supplied via irrigation water. This course will explore the history of hydroponics, plant nutrition as applied to hydroponics, and other soilless growing options.

Hydroponics is the application of soilless culture techniques for the growth of plants. This course will reinforce the concepts of hydroponic food production learned in AGR 120 - Hydroponic Food Production Lecture. Students will learn the necessary components of hydroponic systems and apply the techniques of hydroponics to grow common plant species. In addition, students will explore the cultivation of plants using self-designed hydroponic systems, commercial hydroponic systems, and greenhouses.