Wageningen University's Master of Science (MSc) programme in Plant Biotechnology caters to several types of bachelor students, who wish to continue their studies at Master of Science (MSc) level. Besides our own BSc students in Plant Sciences and BSc students in Biotechnology and Biology from our own and other Dutch universities, it also aims at Dutch students who hold a bachelor of professional education's degree in e.g. (Botanical) Laboratory Research, Biotechnology or Agri- and Horticulture. How ever the majority of Plant Biotechnology master students comes from abroad.
There are three specialisations.
Functional Plant Genomics
Genomics profoundly affects plant molecular biology and genetics. Genomic information on Arabidopsis and rice has revolutionised insight into plant genomics. By using array technology, gene expression can be studied to improve our understanding of the complexity of the plant transcriptome and interactions between genes and gene products.
Plants for Human and Animal Health
Plants are increasingly being used as a safe and inexpensive alternative for the production of valuable proteins for food supplements and pharmaceuticals. This specialisation provides a fundamental understanding of how plants can be exploited for the production of foreign proteins and metabolites. In addition biomedical aspects, including immunology and food allergy, and also nutritional genomics and plant metabolomics can be studied.
Molecular Plant Breeding and Pathology
Molecular approaches to analyse and change qualitative and quantitative traits in cultivated plants are highly effective to improve yield and quality of food and renewable resources, disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. Molecular plant breeding focuses on the application of molecular markers and genomics to explore natural variation and on the development of transgene technologies to expand genetic variation. Molecular plant pathology aims at understanding and exploitation of plant-insect, plant-pathogen and crop-weed interactions and the development of new technologies for integrated plant health management. These technologies include improved molecular detection of pathogens and transgene technologies to introduce resistance genes into crops.
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