Plants are central to life on this planet. They produce the oxygen we breathe, are the main source of our nutrition along with fibre and bioenergy. Plants are also a rich source of pharmaceutical and other novel products. The rapidly increasing demand of food and fibre together with the requirement for sustainable energy such as biofuels requires extensive research and training of experts in different areas of plant sciences. The central aim of the Doctoral Programme in Plant Sciences (DPPS) is to meet these challenges and to train world-class experts in the fields of basic and translational plant sciences including plant biology and associated biotic interactions, plant production and other applications such as bioenergy to fulfil the ever growing needs for well qualified and highly motivated researchers in modern plant sciences and its industrial applications in Finland and globally.

The doctoral programme aims to train scientific researchers in the following themes: 

• molecular plant biology
• genetics, genomics and breeding
• physiology and biochemistry
• developmental biology
• pathology and biotechnology
• plant production
• ecophysiology
• systematics
• bioenergy