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Target Audience – This distance course is targeted to graduate students in the plant sciences, as well as to professionals in the public and private sectors. It will provide one transferable graduate-level credit.
Content – The course will focus on plant breeding strategies and practices directed toward improving plant performance under drought stress. Concepts for this intensive, one-credit graduate-level course include:
• Analyzing the target environment
• Understanding plant response to drought stress and plant adaptation strategies
• Determining which phenotypic traits to use in selection practices
• Using wild species and landraces as sources of drought tolerance
• Understanding transgenic approaches and quantitative trait locus analysis for improving drought tolerance
• Learning from successful examples of improving drought tolerance in a variety of crops
The sixteen-week curriculum is divided into fifteen lessons. Each lesson’s content will be delivered via a voice-over PowerPoint presentation, a video, a reading assignment, or combinations of these media. Some lessons will require student participation in an online discussion, completion of an online quiz, or submission of a homework assignment. The compiled homework assignments will comprise a portfolio of documents describing an analysis and breeding strategy for a specific crop and environment. There will be a comprehensive final exam administered at the end of the course.
Program Costs and Requirements – The cost of student tuition is $624 plus a $25 technology fee. Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software (e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) is required, as is Adobe Reader. Students are required to have access to a computer and Internet access.
Registration and Information – For questions, please contact the program assistant, Kierra Jewell, at kierra.jewell@colostate.edu. Registrations will be accepted through September 4, 2017 or until the class is full (25 students).
Prerequisite
SOCR 330 (Principles of Genetics); SOCR 460 (Plant Breeding). Participants should have a basic understanding of genetics, plant breeding, and plant physiology. Prior to the beginning of the course, students will review online material on these topics to provide a common background in breeding and physiology concepts.
Students not wishing to earn academic credit should register for the noncredit course AGCT 3570.