This four-year BSc with Placement Year allows you to do a year-long, paid work placement between your second and third year. You'll pay reduced fees for the year you're on placement. You'll also have regular contact with your tutor and all the support you need from the University. We have a dedicated tutor to help you find a placement, and our Careers Service is on hand to offer support and advice. We teach plant sciences as an experimental science. We concentrate on rapidly advancing areas such as signalling between plants under stress and pathogen attacks, the contribution of plants to the global carbon cycle and global warming. We examine these issues at many levels including the control and regulation of gene expression, developmental physiology, communities and ecosystems. Optional modules cover specialist areas such as photosynthesis, global warming and vegetation modelling, climate change and pollution impacts on plant communities. You'll draw on a variety of techniques to investigate molecular biology, genetics, biotechnology, plant-pathogen and plant-symbiont interactions, carnivorous and parasitic plants, conservation and biodiversity. Our research spans the globe, from tropical rainforests to subarctic tundra. There are optional field courses available in the Peak District National Park (UK), Anglesey (UK), Ireland, Arctic Sweden, the Mediterranean and tropical rainforest in Malaysian Borneo.