In contrast in the field of Botany paralleling this effort, with thousands of species, if not millions, we have a dramatic paucity of such researchers. In a crowd of folks looking at genomic issues oftentimes the botanist feels like the one left out. After all who thinks about plants? At least until one look beyond the humans and sees what is out there.
The Scientist has a compelling piece on this issue. As they state:
The unsustainable rate of PhDs awarded per year in the biomedical sciences does not extrapolate to the rate of PhDs in other life sciences, however, especially the agricultural sciences, where the rate of PhDs per year has remained flat for decades. Since 1982, we have consistently trained only about 1,000 PhDs in applied agricultural and related sciences each year. And over the last decade, the U.S. has annually produced only 800 or so plant scientists working in applied agricultural science and only 100 with the skills for basic plant research. (See “Plant science stagnates.”) Given the global agricultural challenges we now face, this is a problem.
Oftentimes the student feels inferior if they study plants, after all the hot areas all relate to humans. In reality we can learn a great deal from plants. They are really not that different from us humans. Yet their differences are oftentimes enlightening. Again all too often one thinks of Botany in the context of plant classification or agriculture. In reality plants are a wonderful vehicle to study complex mechanism. I have examined tessellation effects based on complex gene interactions which in turn apply to many cancer pathways.
Perhaps a solution is not to separate Botany and plants from animals and humans. The real problem is the paucity of voices in this area.
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