Environmental Agrobiology

The main aim of the master's degree in Environmental Agrobiology is to provide specialized, high-level, multidisciplinary training in sustainable vegetable production field .The course trains specialists who will gain in-depth knowledge of the scientific, methodological and technological principles behind sustainable agriculture, based on the promotion and efficiency of resources and the conservation and protection of the environment in the present and future context of climate change.

The specific objectives are to:

Gain up-to-date scientific training in the field of environmental agrobiology.
Develop skills in conventional, current and innovative methods and instrumental techniques applied to environmental agrobiology.
Design and develop projects, draw conclusions, and communicate them with scientific and technical rigour.

Basic competences

• Knowledge forming the basis or opportunity of original thinking in the development and/or application of ideas, typically in a research context.
• Capacity to apply the acquired knowledge to problem-solving in new or relatively unknown environments within broader or multidisciplinary contexts related to the field of studies.
• Capacity to integrate knowledge and tackle the complexity of formulating judgements based on incomplete or limited information, giving due consideration to the social and ethical responsibilities involved in applying knowledge and making judgements.
• Capacity to communicate knowledge and conclusions and the grounds on which they have been reached to specialist and non-specialist audiences in a clear and unambiguous manner.
• Skills to enable lifelong self-directed and independent learning.

General competences

• Skills to search for, analyse and summarize highly specialized scientific and technical information, including a capacity for understanding, reasoning and scientific criticism.
• Basic research skills in the field of environmental agrobiology.
• Capacity to identify the objectives, purposes, and priorities of projects or tasks, and to organize appropriate deadlines and resources.
• Capacity to assess and select the most appropriate theory and method to solve specific problems in environmental agrobiology, including skills in handling specific instruments and obtaining and interpreting experimental results.
• Critical attitude in specialized projects in the field of environmental agrobiology, and a capacity to make judgements and defend them rigorously using scientific language.
• Capacity to assess social, legal and ethical responsibilities as well as the sociological and environmental impact of the use of certain techniques and applications in environmental agrobiology.

Specific competences

• Capacity to assess the current state and future prospects of environmental agrobiology in relation to the improvement and management of crops, as well as their socioeconomic and environmental implications.
• Capacity to carry and improve crops through conventional methods and the most advanced technologies, such as molecular tools, in vitro culture and transgenesis.
• Capacity to analyse the effects of environmental factors and the impact generated by climate change on plant metabolism, and its impact on the improvement of crop production and their quality.
• Capacity to assess the quality of soils in order to prevent and control nutritional deficiencies to improve crop production and quality.
• Capacity to describe the response mechanisms of plants to different situations of environmental stress, the procedures to attenuate it, and thus collaborate in the development of commercial products to mitigate crop stress.
• Knowledge of the bases and abilities in the application of relevant technologies, such as remote, ecophysiological and molecular perception techniques, to monitor, evaluate production and diagnose the nutritional status and stress crops can undergo.
• Capacity to design and obtain transgenic plants, and to evaluate their efficacy and the risks of applying these techniques to plant improvement, through the manipulation of plant metabolism, adaptation to adverse environments and the improvement of qualitative parameters, and also in their use as biofactories.
• Capacity to apply the knowledge acquired to design and carry out research work on environmental agrobiology: to formulate a hypothesis, to select the methodology and carry out the research, to execute a statistical analysis protocol, to interpret and write the results (in a clear and concise manner), to discuss them and elaborate reasoned conclusions.
• Capacity to transfer the knowledge acquired (scientific, methodological and technical) to the agri-food sector, collaborating with companies in the sector or creating and managing a company.