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Chairperson: Prof. Dr. Rubina Abid

The Department of Botany, University of Karachi was established in 1953. The university at that time was located at Chand-Bibi Road, near Civil Hospital, Karachi. When the university moved to its present premises on 18th January 1960, the Department of Botany was located in 2 barracks. The present building of the Department of Botany with laboratories, lecture rooms and an auditorium was constructed in the late 1960s.
The department offers over 70 different courses at undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D., levels to cater to the human resource requirements for teaching and research in the fields of education, agriculture, environment, NGOs, research organizations, pharmaceutical and other industries.

  botany  

Specific Research Areas
Faculty members are working in six specialized fields of plant sciences and are endeavuoring to explore of the plant world.
Following are the specific research areas:

  1. Classical Taxonomy, Chemosystematics, Cytogenetics and Medicinal plants.
  2. Plant Anatomy and Plant Tissue Culture.
  3. Phycology, Marine Botany and Economic Importance of Seaweed.
  4. Mycology, Plant Pathology, Fungal Biotechnology, Plant microbe interaction and Diagnosis of emerging and

re-emerging plant diseases.

  1. Plant Physiology, Plant enzymology, Biosaline Agriculture, Stress Physiology and Phenomics.
  2. Plant Ecology, Dendrochronology and Environmental Pollution, and Halophytesutilization.

The teachersof Botany have completed about 65 research projects with the support of national and international funding agencies. Currently several research projects are in progress. More than 2600 research papers have been published in journals of international repute by the teachers andresearchers of the department. The Pakistan Journal of Botany and International Journal of Biology and Biotechnologyare also published from the Department of Botany, University of Karachi.

 

Career Opportunities
Specialization in different branches opflant sciencesoffered by the department is helpful insecuring jobs in agriculture based Organizations, research institutions, teaching in various colleges and universities and in environmental NGOs like WWF and IUCN.