Teaching Responsibilities
Undergraduate Courses
PBIO*3110 - Crop Physiology
The overall objective of the course is to build an understanding of the interaction of a community of plants with its environment across the plant's life cycle and the implication of this interaction on the quantity and quality of yield. As part of this objective, we will examine how the crop stand responds to specific alterations in the primary metabolism, physiological interactions of different tissues, and crop response to the environment brought about by climatic change or directed manipulation of the crop by molecular modification and classical breeding and genetics.
In order to meet this objective, biochemical, biophysical, physiological, and eco-physiological principles that are important in growth and development of crop species will be discussed during the lecture period. Specifically, this will involve an exploration of phenology; interception of radiation by crop communities; leaf/canopy photosynthesis and respiration; carbon transport and assimilate partitioning; mineral nutrition; leaf canopy energy balance and transpiration.
In the laboratory section, we will explore how instrumentation can be used to quantify environmental influences on crop productivity, in general, and to identify genotype x environment interactions, in particular. Also, the principles discussed in the lectures will be applied to specific agricultural and horticultural crops by student-led presentations.
Graduate Courses
CROP*6010 - Physiology of Crop Yield
CROP*6230 - Colloquium in Physiology and Management
Graduate Students
- Ken Janovicek (PhD) - Causal factors in the yield response of corn to rotation and tillage
- Lin Li (PhD) - Physiological and genetic properties influencing floret development in a maize hybrid and its parental inbred lines.
- Diego Cerrudo (MSc) - Effects of stress during early phases of development on plant-to-plant variability and grain yield in maize.
- Hugo Gonzalez (MSc) - Physiological basis of high plant-density tolerance in maize.
© Copyright University of Guelph
