Department of Botany

Botany also called plant sciences, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and branch of biology. Botany originated is prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early human to identify and use of plants for their medicinal properties.

The history of botany goes as far as to 4^th century B.C.E. Both Aristole and Theophrastus got involved in identifying plants and describing them. Theophrastus (C.371-287BC) was hailed as the “father of botany” because of his two-surviving works on the plant studies. Although Aristole also wrote about plants, he received more recognition for his studied of animals.

In 1665, using an early microscope, Robert Hook discovered cells in living plant tissue. The cell nucleus was discovered by Robert Brown in 1831. In 1882 Flemming observed the longitudinal splitting of chromosome in the dividing nucleus and concluded that each daughter nucleus received half of each of the chromosomes of the mother nucleus. Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of plant heredity first published in 1866.The energy component of photosynthesis, the capture and storage of the Sun’ radiant energy was elucidated in 1847 by Myar. In the mid-19th century when sachs in 1862, noted that starch was formed in green cells only in the presence of light and 1882 he confirmed carbohydrates as the starting point for all other organic compounds in plant.

Early 20th century it was found that the number of chromosomes in a given species is constant. In the 1920s and 1930s population genetic combined the theory of evolution with Mendelian genetic to produce the modern synthesis. Between 1930s and 1950s it was determined that ATP, located in mitochondria, was the source of cellular chemical energy and the constituent reactions of photosynthesis were progressively related. Then, in 1944 DNA was extracted for first time. In the 1960s it was determined that the Earth’s earliest life-forms treated as plants, the cyanobacteria known as stromatolite, dated back some 3.5 billion year. Genetic engineering, the insertion of genes into the host cell for cloning, began in the 1970s.In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, new techniques were developed for the study of plants, including analysis of chromosome number, the structure and functions of enzymes and the other proteins etc. In the last two decades of the 20^th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecules genetic analysis including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. In 21^st century plant sciences are molecular genetics and epigenetics.

Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines that study the structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, disease, ecology (interactions with their environment) and evolution of plant. Botany is important primarily because it is the scientific study of plants, which are in turn used in many aspects of human life. Botany is the systematic and scientific study of structure and the physiological processes of plants.

The Department of Botany came into existence when University of Medicine, Taunggyi become established on October 3, 2015. The department is situated in the right using on the second floor of main building. The first Head of Botany Department is Daw Thu Mon Tun, Lecturer. The Department of Botany was composed of one Lecturer/Head of the Department, one Lecturer, three Assistant Lecturers and three newly appointed demonstrators in 2015. The department of Botany offers theory and practical courses to the foundation year semester 1 students.