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.

Food production ranks among the most environmentally significant of human activities. Agriculture is practiced in every corner of the planet and in all but the most extreme of ecosystems. Life-sustaining agricultural practices are, however, often linked to habitat and biodiversity loss, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and increasingly to the extensive use of chemicals and non-point source pollution. Producing food uses twice as much water as all other human activities combined. In this context, and given new challenges posed by climate change, rapid urbanization, and shifts in the balance of the global economy, how will we be able to sustain or increase food production to meet the needs of 9 billion people while ensuring the ecological health of our agricultural systems and the green infrastructure our communities rely on? In this course, students will learn about the origins, major concepts, and current issues of sustainability in agriculture. Our society's agricultural history has unfolded in such a way that we are just now trying to understand and create sustainability where it does not currently exist. Students will explore environmental, economic, and social considerations of sustainability in agriculture; and, at the conclusion of the course, be able to understand and explain the characteristics of the current agricultural system, the many components of sustainable agriculture and how they relate to each other, and ways that society is moving or could move toward a sustainable agricultural system.

How can we balance the multiple, often competing, objectives of sustainable agricultural intensification to promote both agricultural productivity and human well-being? The answer to this requires a transdisciplinary, agroecological perspective. Agroecology is the integrative study of the ecology of the entire food system, encompassing ecological, economic, and social dimensions. This course is designed to introduce various topics in agroecology. Students will take an ecosystems approach to the study of agriculture that will enable them to analyze the environmental, social, and economic interconnections within various types of agricultural models locally and globally. The goal of this course is to give students a basic understanding of the interactions between agriculture and the surrounding environmental matrix leading to sustainable food systems. Students will integrate concepts across agronomy, ecology, biogeochemistry, soil science, and hydrology.

The manipulation of plant reproduction is the basis for plant propagation which, in turn, is one of the fundamental and characteristic activities of horticulture. Any individual working with horticultural crops must understand the natural and induced genetic variation in such plants and how this variation is managed. To be effective in propagating plants both the biological bases and the commercial practices must be studied and understood. All aspects of plant propagation will be studied including methods of propagating by seeds, bulbs, divisions, layers, cuttings, budding, grafting, and micropropagation. The timing, techniques, and materials for making cuttings, environmental conditions, and media requirements for rooting cuttings of ornamental plants, fruit trees, shrubs, and flowering plants will also be studied. Various propagation structures, soils, and fertilizer requirements will be considered. Emphasis is placed on the basic principles of plant propagation to provide an adequate background in the areas of agronomy, horticulture, forestry, and other disciplines of plant science.

This course is a detailed study of the concepts, techniques, equipment, and facilities involved in sexual and asexual multiplication in plants. This course will explore the scientific theory and commercial practices of plant propagation by spore, seed, cuttings, layering, division, budding, grafting, micropropagation, and specialized structures. Upon completion of this course students will have a thorough understanding of plant propagation and be able to apply this knowledge to solve problems and work as a propagator.

Agriculture Food Safety focuses on presenting agricultural practices as they relate to the production of farm products from a food safety standpoint. Topics include currently used food safety programs to control biological, chemical and physical hazards and assure the safety of foods, the application of current technologies in reducing foodborne illness, specific guidelines for some key agricultural commodities, regulating and monitoring food safety guidelines, and an introduction of regulations such as Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), Good Harvesting Practices (GHP), and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP).

This course provides lab-based training in botany and applies the principles taught in AGR 140, Agricultural Food Safety lecture. Students will conduct exercises dealing with food preservation, spoilage, and food poisoning. Basic techniques for the isolation, identification and quantification of specific microbes occurring in foods are assayed. Students will also learn techniques to identify bacteria in food.

Horticulture is the area of agriculture involving the science of growing and caring for plants, such as fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, flowers, foliage plants, woody ornamentals, and turf. This course will focus on plants, soils, and landscaping. Topics will include identification and use of indigenous and introduced landscape plants; plants for special uses in urban environments; emphasis on plants' ornamental attributes, cultural requirements, and adaptability in urban and suburban environments. Additionally, students will learn and how plant processes are influenced by the environment, like soil-water-plant relations and hardiness maps.

Horticultural Lab is designed to provide a broad understanding of horticulture through basic and applied science. This course will introduce students to the techniques and science for the growth and propagation of horticultural plants, including identification, conditions for growth, fertilization, soil science, pest management, and horticultural safety.

Worldwide, aquaculture is one of the most ancient forms of animal husbandry. Aquaponics combines conventional aquaculture with hydroponics. Currently, culture of aquatic biota for direct consumption, stock enhancement, or other purposes is the fastest growing and most diverse sector of livestock production. This course will give the student an understanding of the basic principles of aquaculture and aquaponics, including production systems, water quality, nutrition, spawning, larval culture and grow-out, and culture methodologies of fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and plants.

This course provides lab-based training in production aquaculture and applies the principles taught in AGR 220, Aquaculture and Aquaponics lecture. The students will have the opportunity to conduct hands-on activities associated with the culture and husbandry of aquatic animals. Additionally, students will apply the concepts of hydroponic food production with aquaculture to produce food through the use of aquaponics. Students can expect to get wet and dirty.