Programme description

Our MPhil Plant Science programme enables you to undertake a research project that will improve understanding of Plant Science.

Food security and a healthy diet within the context of a growing global population and climate change has become major challenges of our time, particularly if this is coupled with the need to find more sustainable and renewable sources of biofuels and chemicals.

Research in Manchester addresses both these issues, firstly by engineering plant development to generate plants that have a higher yield, improved nutrition and are also more resistant to external stress and, secondly, by exploiting plants and microalgae to generate renewable and sustainable biofuels, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Well-characterised model plants such as Arabidopsis, as well as crops and natural species, are used in interdisciplinary approaches that entail interactions between groups across the University.

A range of funding agencies, as well as industrial sponsors, support our research projects. After graduation, our students go on to have successful careers in plant sciences, industry or academia.

Three major themes run through our plant sciences research:

• manipulating plant development to increase yield and stress resilience;
• biochemistry and genetics of plastids and their use as cell factories;
• optimising plant defence at the cellular level.

Teaching and learning

PhD/MPhil programmes are based on individual research projects that last three to four years (PhD) or one year (MPhil), working with a specific Primary Supervisor and Co-Supervisor(s).

Applicants are specifically matched with a Primary Supervisor and individual project based on their research interests and background.

Career opportunities

Your postgraduate research degree will open up a range of career opportunities after you graduate.