| Department of Agricultural Sciences
80 % Department of Natural Sciences 20 % | |||||||||||||
| Earliest Possible Year | BSc. 3 year to MSc. 1 year | ||||||||||||
| Duration | Two blocks | ||||||||||||
| Credits | 15 (ECTS) | ||||||||||||
| Course Level | Joint BSc and MSc The course is planned to be an opportunity both for MSc and for third year BSc students, providing study flexibility. | ||||||||||||
| Examination | Final Examination written examination Written Exam in Lecturehall All aids allowed Description of Examination: 4 hour written exam with 4 main questions broadly covering subjects from lectures and exercises Weight: 25% to each of the four main questions, summing up to 100% 13-point scale, internal examiner Dates of Exam: 27 January 2006 | ||||||||||||
| Requirement For Attending Exam | Approval of 75% of exercises | ||||||||||||
| Organisation of Teaching | Combination of lectures and theoretical exercises, possibly with some teaching periods at KVL-Taastrup | ||||||||||||
| Block Placement | Block 1 Week Structure: B Block 2 Week Structure: B | ||||||||||||
| Teaching Language | English | ||||||||||||
| Optional Prerequisites | 055511 | ||||||||||||
| Areas of Competence the Course Will Address | |||||||||||||
| The course supports students in the areas of natural sciences and technology & production at a graduate level. The students will individually and in groups work with subject matter specific as well as more holistic problems and data, building professional capacity for natural resources and crop production assessments and technology improvements in diverse tropical agro-ecosystems. Competencies within Basic Sciences emphasise on knowledge and understanding of soil, water, plant and atmosphere relationships in a tropical environmental context. Competencies within Applied Sciences (Technology and Production) emphasise on the application of basic scientific principles across the diverse range of socio-cultural and bio-physical environments encountered in tropical agriculture. Competencies within Ethics and Values emphasise on awareness and responsiveness to poverty alleviation and sustainability issues in tropical agriculture. | |||||||||||||
| Course Objectives | |||||||||||||
| Providing students, having a BSc-level background in fundamental agricultural sciences or equivalent, a comprehensive understanding of soil, water, and plant nutrient characteristics and processes and crop production in tropical rainfed and irrigated agro-ecosystems including both low and high potential areas. Focus is on bio-physical related production constraints and opportunities in small-scale farming systems, within the context of poverty alleviation and sustainable land use. | |||||||||||||
| Course Contents | |||||||||||||
| The course focuses on capacity development in core discipline areas while being interdisciplinary by integrating several disciplines in a holistic analysis of the biological, chemical and physical characteristics and processes in tropical soil-plant-atmosphere systems of relevance for crop production. The course is divided in three major phases: i. Introduction: tropical agriculture and natural resources management, constraints and opportunities, and development issues; tropical climate; agro-ecosystems and farming systems; case studies. ii. Fundamentals: soils and environmental chemistry; agrohydrology and bioclimatology; soil fertility; plant nutrition; crops. iii. Management, applications and integration within selected agro-ecosystems and farming systems including: land and water management design principles and practices (tillage; irrigation and drainage; sloping land management; water harvesting; integrated watershed development and management); nutrient cycling, an outline of fertilizers and fertilization, and integrated nutrition of selected crops; weed control; selected crops, cropping systems, post-harvest technology and breeding; environmental protection. | |||||||||||||
| Teaching And Learning Methods | |||||||||||||
| The course combines lectures and theoretical exercises with individual and group work. Integration across disciplines is enhanced by addressing the same typology and set of agro-ecosystems, farming systems and crops in all course elements, and by using a common dataset with comprehensive case studies as the basis for all exercises where possible. The selected agro-ecosystems, farming systems and crops include inter alia: humid, semi-arid and highland zones; maize, wheat and wetland rice based cropping systems; rainfed and irrigated conditions; and sloping lands. | |||||||||||||
| Course Litterature | |||||||||||||
| Collection of selected texts and exercises (details to be announced) | |||||||||||||
| Course Coordinator | |||||||||||||
| Jens Raunsø Jensen, jrj@life.ku.dk, Department of Agriculture and Ecology/Environment, Resources and Technology, Phone: 35333387 Ole Kragholm Borggaard, okb@life.ku.dk, Department of Natural Sciences/Soil and Environmental Chemistry, Phone: 35332419 Jørgen Lindskrog Christiansen, jlc@life.ku.dk, Department of Agricultural Sciences/Crop Science, Phone: 35333452 Jens Carl Streibig, jcs@life.ku.dk, Department of Agricultural Sciences/Crop Science, Phone: 35333457 Andreas de Neergaard, adn@life.ku.dk, Department of Agricultural Sciences/Plant and Soil Science, Phone: 35333499 Hans Christian Bruun Hansen, haha@life.ku.dk, /VIVA - Knowledge about Water, Phone: 3528 | |||||||||||||
| Study Board | |||||||||||||
| Study Committee NSN | |||||||||||||
| Course Scope | |||||||||||||
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