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Bury botany's outdated image

Nature volume 520, page 295 (2015)Cite this article

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Botany courses at academic institutions are dwindling worldwide, yielding too few graduates to replace retiring botanists (see, for example, go.nature.com/sdcagw). Yet botanical expertise is fundamental to a range of topical issues, including biodiversity, agricultural development, biofuel production, drug discovery and food science.

The public can find it hard to differentiate between even common plants, so botanists should engage more in outreach efforts. They also need to devise fresh approaches to teaching upcoming generations about the importance of plants, relying less on pressed dead specimens and focusing on new molecular and systematic tools. This more contemporary treatment of the subject could help to counter botany's lack of appeal to students and research-funding agencies.

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  1. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Isabel Marques

  2. University of Zaragoza, Huesca, Spain

    Isabel Marques

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  1. Isabel Marques
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Correspondence to Isabel Marques.

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Marques, I. Bury botany's outdated image. Nature 520, 295 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/520295e

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