These best free plant biology courses are designed for individuals who want to know about plant life and plant development.
A plant is a living thing that has a stem, leaves, and roots, and grows in the earth. For it to grow, it must be watered as often as required. When land is planted with a particular type of plant or crop, plants, seeds, or young trees are put into the land for it to grow there.
Plant Biology, also known as botany, is a branch of biology that deals with the science of plant life and. A plant biologist, botanist, or plant scientist is a scientist who specializes in plant and plant development.
Read on to know the 10 best free plant biology courses in 2022.
10 Best Free Plant Biology Courses in 2023
This list of plant biology courses contains both paid and free resources to help you learn Plant Biology. It is suitable for newbies, intermediates, and experts.
- Understanding Plants – Part I: What a Plant Knows by Tel Aviv University (Coursera)
- Understanding Plants – Part II: Fundamentals of Plant Biology by Tel Aviv University (Coursera)
- Plant Bioinformatics Capstone (Coursera)
- PLBIO 2450 Plant Biology by Cornell University (SCE+)
- Improving Food Production with Agricultural Technology and Plant Biotechnology (Future Learn)
- Botany and Plant Pathology Course (Oregon State University)
- Plant-Based Diets: Food for a Sustainable Future (edX)
- Department of Plant Biology (Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
- Plant Bioinformatics Methods (Coursera)
- Eat Real Food: How to Eat a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet (Udemy)
1. Understanding Plants – Part I: What a Plant Knows by Tel Aviv University (Coursera)
Duration: 12 Hours
Course provider: Coursera
Type: Online
Language: English
The course is created for beginners who are interested in learning about the plant’s sensations, how they experience the world if the plants respond to music and lights or see or feel, the inner lives of plants, the latest research on plant genetics, and how plants understand when any insect is infesting its neighbor, etc. This course is taught by Professor Daniel Chamovitz, a Ph.D. degree in Genetics, and aims to introduce you to basic plant biology, and the biological research of plants.
Key facts:
- You will learn cell biology, what a plant sees, smells feels, and remembers.
- The course is completely online so you can learn and set the deadlines according to your schedule. The deadlines are flexible.
- Upon completing this course, you will get a course completion certificate.
- You have to pass all the academic exams on campus before you can receive academic credit.
2. Understanding Plants – Part II: Fundamentals of Plant Biology by Tel Aviv University (Coursera)
Duration: 5 Hours
Course provider: Coursera
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
This course is the second installment of the Understanding Plants course. It is mainly designed for the intermediates to learn the basic science of plant biology and contains four lectures. Among the things you will learn are the structures and the functions of plants and plant cells, how the plant takes carbon dioxide from its surroundings and water from the soil and how it turns them into oxygen for us, how plants grow and make flowers, Plant Genetic Engineering, and Photosynthesis process, etc.
Key Facts
- This online course can be taken at your own time and pace
- Learn about the plant organs, root and chloroplast structures, flower development and genetic engineering method, recombinant DNA technology, etc.
- Upon completing this course, you will ear-+
- n a course completion certificate that you can add to your resume.
- You have to pass all the academic exams on campus successfully before you can receive academic credit.
3. Plant Bioinformatics Capstone
Duration: 5 weeks long, 9 hours worth of material
Course provider: Coursera
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
Paid Certificate Available
The Plant Bioinformatics covers 33 plant-specific online tools from genome browsers to transcriptomic data mining to promoter/network analyses and others. These tools are used to hypothesize a biological role for a gene of unknown function and summarized in a written lab report.
This Plant Bioinformatics Specialization on Coursera introduces core bioinformatics competencies and resources, such as NCBI’s Genbank, Blast, multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetics in Bioinformatic Methods I, protein-protein interactions, structural bioinformatics, and RNA-seq analysis in Bioinformatic Methods II, the plant-specific concepts and tools introduced in Plant Bioinformatics and the Plant Bioinformatics Capstone.
This course/capstone was implemented by Eddi Esteban, Will Heikoop, and Nicholas Provart, and developed with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts and Science Open Course Initiative Fund (OCIF) funding.
4. PLBIO 2450 Plant Biology by Cornell University (SCE+)
Duration: Self-paced
Course provider: Cornell University
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
This is a summer session course offered by Cornell University offers for detailed learning about plant identifications and Botany. In this course, you will learn about the structure of flowering plants, their classifications, the physiology of the plants, and the reproduction system. If you don’t have college-level Biology knowledge. You can get supplemental instruction materials and work closely with the course instructor.
Key Facts:
- You will learn about the evaluation of basic biological concepts.
- You will understand the basic principles of Darwin’s plant evolution and the major principle of plant biology
- After completing this course, you will be able to differentiate between the major land plant lineages
5. Improving Food Production with Agricultural Technology and Plant Biotechnology
Duration: 3 weeks long, 3 hours a week
Course provider: FutureLearn
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
$49.00 Certificate Available
This course covers how to address challenges in growing, harvesting, and processing food, the innovative research solutions that address some of the biggest issues in food, agriculture, and plant biotechnology, and the journey plants take, from crops in the field to food on your plate, the importance of scientific research in food security and the new technologies that are transforming agriculture.
This course is designed for adults interested in the technology behind food production and 16-19-year-olds studying biology-related STEM subjects at the A level or undergraduate level.
6. Botany and Plant Pathology Course (Oregon State University)
Duration: 2 Weeks
Course provider: Oregon State University
Type: Free Online course
Language: English
$49.00 Certificate Available
This course offered by Oregon State University will enhance your knowledge of Botany and Plant Pathology. You will learn a brief detail about the importance of plants in the environment, plant cells and their types, plant function and physiology, the identification and collection of ferns and flowering plants, plant cells and water relations, photosynthesis, plant development process, transpiration, etc. Laboratory support is available to help you understand the physiological processes in the plant system.
Key Facts:
- Learn the symptoms, diagnosis, and how to prevent plant diseases, focusing on virus pathogens, bacteria, and fungi.
- You can take undergraduate degrees. Lab facilities are available in the course to understand better.
- Learn 10 different foreign languages. After completing this course, you can apply your learning efficiently.
- Renowned faculties have created this course.
7. Plant-Based Diets: Food for a Sustainable Future
Duration: 7 weeks long, 2-3 hours a week
Course provider: edX
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
$139.00 Certificate Available
The MOOC Plant-Based Diets: Food for a Sustainable Future course covers the science of three global issues – climate change, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases – and how they are directly impacted by what you eat.
Becoming aware of the diet-health-climate connection enables you to improve your health, as well as that of the population and planet. There is a large-scale adoption of a predominantly plant-based diet that enables us to change our entire food system from the bottom up. In doing so, the future of food becomes sustainable.
There are many benefits of a plant-rich diet, and each sets off a series of cascading positive effects. A plant-rich diet protects you from the worst effects of infectious viral diseases (like the current corona pandemic), and can also limit the possible emergence of new outbreaks in your body.
You can reduce your carbon footprint and environmental impact by eating a plant-based (or vegan) diet.
A whole food plant-based diet is an optimal diet that helps improve overall and metabolic health. The MOOC Plant-Based Diets was created for ambitious learners, students, experts, and professionals from around the world interested in health, nutrition, environmental sustainability, system thinking, and the future of food.
8. Department of Plant Biology (Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
Duration: Self-paced
Course provider: Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
This course covers the fundamentals of plant biology, such as, how they grow and reproduce, the plant survival process such as – photosynthesis, nutrient assimilation, respiration, water transport system, etc, DNA and RNA, cell divisions, ecology, evolution, and the importance of plants conservation in the ecosystem. The presentations and assignments provided by the instructors will help you develop your critical-thinking capacity. Other popular courses include Plant Diversity, Elements of Plant Physiology, Morphology of Vascular Plants, Plant Biochemistry, Plant-insect Interactions, Plant Variations, and more. You can take the General Plant Biology Course from the list of courses offered by Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Key Facts
- Learn through the oral lectures and PowerPoint presentations from the 50-minute face-to-face sessions that occur three times a week.
- All the course materials, lectures, and sample tests are available online.
- 2 hours a week for lab work.
- Course topics are systematically allotted for better understanding.
9. Plant Bioinformatic Methods (Coursera)
Duration: 35 weeks long, 2 hours a week
Course provider: Coursera Specialization
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
Certificate Available
The Plant Bioinformatics Specialization on Coursera teaches core bioinformatics competencies and resources, such as NCBI’s Genbank, Blast, multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetics in Bioinformatic Methods I, followed by protein-protein interaction, structural bioinformatics, and RNA-seq analysis in Bioinformatic Methods II. In-Plant Bioinformatics 33 plant-specific online tools from genome browsers to transcriptomic data mining to promoter/network analyses and others are covered. These tools are used by a Plant Bioinformatics Capstone to hypothesize a biological role for a gene of unknown function, then summarized in a written lab report. This specialization is useful to any modern plant molecular biologist wanting to get a feeling for the incredible scope of data available to researchers. A small amount of R programming is introduced in Bioinformatic Methods II, but most of the tools are web applications. Access to a laptop or desktop computer is recommended if you enroll for this course as it may not work as mobile applications on your phone or tablet.
10. Eat Real Food: How to Eat a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet (Udemy)
Duration: 4-5 hours worth of material
Course provider: Udemy
Type: Free Online Course
Language: English
Certificate Available
This course covers how to be a healthy vegan or vegetarian in a holistic way for the best health and well-being.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- Why whole plant foods provide the most health, healing, and protection benefits.
- How a holistic nutrition approach differs from a reductionist nutrition approach.
- Nutrition characteristics of all the different whole plant food groups to know how to use them to benefit your health and weight.
- What foods are included as part of whole food, plant-based eating, and why?
- What foods are excluded as part of whole food, plant-based eating, and why?
- How to make healthy plant-based eating quick, easy, and simple with access to dozens of WFPB recipes.
- How to do grocery shopping for whole plant foods and the best ways to eat them.
- How to eat whole food, plant-based outside of the home, when in restaurants, or while traveling.
- How to use your diet to improve your health, weight, energy, and longevity.
- How to create a life-long foundation of healthy eating habits.
Conclusion
Plant biology courses are designed for individuals who want to know about plant life and plant development.
Plant Biology, also known as botany, is a branch of biology that deals with the science of plant life and. A plant biologist, botanist, or plant scientist is a scientist who specializes in plant and plant development. Hopefully, this article has been an eye-opener to the various free plant biology courses you can enroll in
If you have more questions on the best free biology course in 2022, let us know in the comments below.
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