Botany for Tomorrow

The World faces unprecedented challenges in addressing the impacts of climate change, the consequences of substantial increases in human population and the loss of biodiversity. Failure to confront these issues will be catastrophic for life on Earth. Plant scientists are ideally placed to address these challenges which provide a focus for most of the research and teaching conducted in the Botany Department.

The Botany Department contributes to six degree programmes: BA moderatorships in Plant Sciences, Environmental Science, and Functional Biology and MSc degrees in Biodiversity and Conservation, Development Practice, and Environmental Science. Each degree trains graduates to fully engage with the developing smart economy in Ireland and overseas which has to face up to these challenges. Here we provide brief outlines to how this can be achieved for each of these challenges as well as providing some background to the related research that we are currently engaged in. Much of our research in this area is coordinated through the Trinity College Centre for Biodiversity Research.