Prof Monika Koul
“Botany I rank with the most valuable science” Thomas Jefferson
Making an intelligent career choice is important when one passes out of school. It paves the way towards your future destiny. Now that the admission process is on in the colleges after the NEET, JEE, CUET and other competitive exams are out, students are anxious and excited both. Students who have had Biology and appeared in NEET and could not make it, don’t get upset, as there are many new avenues, interesting subjects and various universities that offer exciting and well curated courses for you. Students who want to stay connected to nature and work towards human welfare through science-think of becoming a Botanist.
Botany, the science of plants, is one of the most exciting disciplines where you can make a wonderful and adventurous career. It is a subject under the aegis of which one can know everything about plants- their origin, how they grow, the development process, the reproduction, their physiology, the biomolecules and the structure, form, and functions. Not only do you get to know the importance of the diversity the plant kingdom displays in the living spectrum, but you also get to know the role of the plants in the entire context of the universe, the role of plants in the biosphere, the interactions plants have with other life forms and the environmental variables. Botany teaches you how the energy that drives the living world is transformed: the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy and how plants are symbols of eternity.
Life depends on food, and ever since life existed on the surface of the earth, plants have served as enormous reserves of nutrition. Knowing the plants that are growing in the wild, the economic uses these can be put to is one of the ways to save people from hunger and malnutrition. Botany gives you the opportunity to explore and look for plants in all kinds of habitats and find out how these can be utilized for human welfare. It is not only the land plants, or large plants, Botanists also study plants that are microscopic, plants that can be found in rivers, lakes, oceans and estuaries, the peat bogs and swamps, the hills and mountains, the flowering as well as non-flowering. For those who wanted to become doctors but missed it, this is for you–Botany is the eldest daughter of medicine. Ancient herbalists from many civilizations considered plants to be God’s gift for treating ailments, not only because of the bouquet of chemicals present in them, but also because these helped in psychological wellbeing. Biology students must keep in mind that there are innumerable chemical compounds that have medicinal value banked in plants yet to be identified and characterized. Imagine as a Botanist, you have an opportunity to give to humanity the cures for Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Dementia. You can discover novel chemical molecules that can help overcome infertility issues of couples who rely mostly on medical intervention.
The Government of India is loud and clear that they want to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. Plants- cultivated (corn, rice, millets, sugarcane), wild, microalgae, seaweeds are all being investigated, their end products, the biological waste of these plants are seen as potential sources of bioethanol and biogas. We need trained manpower to screen the plants, cultivate and multiply these plants so you can be a plant breeder, plant biotechnologist after earning a basic degree in Botany and help in creating energy security for the country.
Knowledge of Botany provides you interesting insights in understanding how plant cells work so efficiently, how plants defend themselves against the enemies, how plants adapt to changing climates, how plants optimize their resources and most important how to regenerate and bounce back after stress, these are efficient systems to understand, and your research inputs are important in designing instruments and machines that mimic plant cells. This is an interesting area where botanists can contribute.
Botany is a field-science so all those who want to stay close to nature, understand how living systems lead their secret lives, it is a subject you must study. If you are an adventurous person, love photography and have keen observation skills, you can add new species of plants to the existing flora. Knowledge of plants is also important to create safe havens for other species. Plants do not grow alone-they bring with them insects, birds and microbes and enrich an ecosystem and offer a plethora of ecological services. Understanding ecological interactions is very important in the present context and plants offer you a lot of biological material for research.
So if you study Botany you can further specialize and be a Taxonomist (if you are interested in diversity and field work) ecologist (if you are interested in understanding interactions and want to conserve species), biochemist (if interested in biomolecules), geneticist and a plant breeder (if interested in producing new varieties), biotechnologist (if you want to do some tailoring and editing) in the existing plants, pathologist (if you want to cure plant diseases) and economic botanist (if you are interested in producing and selling the products derived from plants). Every student can find his calling by doing a basic degree in Botany/Plant Science.
How to get there?
Join B.Sc. (Hons.) Botany course from any good university. The basic eligibility criterion is- you should have studied Biology in class 12 as one of your major subjects and written CUET with the subjects mentioned as the eligibility criterion in the exams. In our country there are many Centres for Advanced Study in Botany, excellent universities such as (University of Delhi, Banaras Hindu University, University of Calcutta, Jadavpur University, Punjab University, Chandigarh, Aligarh Muslim University, Osmania University Hyderabad, Madurai Kamaraj University, Central Universities (recently opened in different parts of the country) and many state universities that offer B.Sc. (Hons.) Botany degree. The curriculum for the courses is well designed and curated to meet the requirements of changing times. When the country is working on Mission Life, G-20 and Sustainable Development Goals-Botanists have a lead role to play. The subject is relevant today and it shall stay relevant always. So, dear students, if you want to have a relevant and rewarding career -Choose to be a Botanist!
(The author is Professor, Department of Botany, Hansraj College, University of Delhi.)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
