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Botany Education and Research Botany is the branch of biological science that deals with the scientific study of all aspects of plants- individual life of plants, their complex interactions between themselves, and their interactions with the environment. Bangladesh is an agrarian country with a long history of agriculture. Today, despite the drastic decrease in per capita land due to extremely high population density, agriculture is still the sector that provides work for the bulk of the population. As the discipline of science most closely tied with agriculture, Botany has attracted the attention of biologists and agricultural scientists for a long time and was readily established as an important academic discipline in the regions of the Indian subcontinent that today comprises Bangladesh. Teaching of Botany as a distinct subject formally starts in Bangladesh after the higher secondary level education, that is, at the bachelor's degree level. It is taught as a two-year course for the BSc Pass degree and a three to four year course for BSc Honours degree. The latter programme is offered at the country's four state-run general universities. The BSc Pass degree programme in Botany is offered by most of the country's 1300 or so degree colleges managed by the national university, whose primary function is to conduct examinations in these colleges. At the BSc Honours and MSc level the subject is also taught in about two dozen state-run degree colleges included among these 1300 colleges. The country's agricultural universities also offer courses in Botany. The country's four state-run general universities have had full-fledged Botany Departments for a long time now. The university of dhaka formally started teaching Botany as part of the Department of Biology that was established in 1939. The Department of Biology was headed by the celebrated botanist Panchanan Maheswari. In 1954 the Biology Department was separated into two departments- Department of Botany and Department of Zoology. In the years to follow, botany departments were opened at the university of rajshahi in 1963, at
the university of
chittagong in 1973 and relatively recently at Jahangirnagar University in 1986. These departments offer BSc Honours, MSc, MPhil and PhD degrees in various areas of botany. Botanical research in the past was largely restricted to these university departments. Subsequently, many Research and Development organisations were created by the government in the agriculture sector where botanical research constitutes the prime focus because these institutes are dedicated to research on specific agricultural crops. The important ones among these Research and Development organisations that have made significant contributions to country's agricultural productivity are: Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Bangladesh Jute Research Institute, Bangladesh Tea Research Institute, Bangladesh Forest Research Institute, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Bangladesh National Herbarium, Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture, Bangladesh Sugarcane Research Institute, Bangladesh Sericulture Research and Training Institute and the botany divisions of the Dhaka, Chittagong and Rajshahi Laboratories of Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
The number of botanists involved in university level
teaching in the country is approximately 200. Botanists involved with
college teaching at the BSc Pass level is much higher, to the tune of
a couple of thousand. Every year the four general universities produce
about 250 students with the MSc degree in Botany.
[Zia Uddin Ahmed]
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