Professor

Department of Botany

Govt. College

 Dholpur, Rajasthan, India 

The scientific method is important because it is a systematic and objective approach to discovering new knowledge and understanding the natural world. It involves making observations, developing hypotheses, testing predictions through experimentation, and analyzing data to draw conclusions. This approach helps to ensure that scientific findings are reliable, repeatable, and unbiased. Additionally, the scientific method allows for ongoing refinement and correction of previous findings, helping to promote the advancement of scientific knowledge.

All scientific methods exist for one simple reason: our perceptual systems are flawed. We can’t measure things just be looking at them, so we have standardized ways of measuring We can’t measure what we can’t see or feel directly, so we have things like microscopes, chromatographs, pH meters etc. We’re really bad at figuring out if things are related if they don’t always happen together. We tend to develop superstitions, or suffer from confirmation biases. Doing statistics forces us to be honest with ourselves.

Botany: An Overview

Botany is the study of plants and their various characteristics, including their growth, reproduction, structure, and distribution. It is a very broad and diverse field that encompasses many different subdisciplines, such as plant physiology, plant ecology, and plant systematics. Botany is useful in the following ways-

Supporting human life: Plants provide us with food, medicine, and other valuable resources, and are essential for our survival.

Understanding the environment: Botanists study how plants interact with their environment and contribute to the ecosystem. This knowledge can help us understand and preserve the natural world.

Advancing technology: Botanists develop new techniques and technologies for growing plants in different environments and for different purposes, such as creating new crop varieties.

Studying evolution: Botanists study the history of plant life and how it has evolved over time, providing insight into the history of life on Earth.

Providing beauty and recreation: Plants are beautiful and provide us with places to enjoy nature and relax.

Overall, botany plays a vital role in our understanding of the natural world and supporting human life, and it has many practical applications and benefits.

Botany is the scientific study of plants, or multi cellular organisms, that carry on photosynthesis. As a branch of biology, botany sometimes is referred to as plant science or plant biology. Botany includes a wide range of scientific sub disciplines that study the structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, ecology and evolution of plants.

Sub disciplines Of Botany:

1.     Agronomy and Crop Science- an agricultural science dealing with field crop production and soil management.

2.     Algology and Phycology-the study of algae.

3.     Bacteriology-the study of bacteria (also considered part of microbiology).

4.     Bryology-the study of mosses and liverworts.

5.     Mycology-the study of fungi.

6.     Palaeobotany-the study of plant fossils.

7.     Plant Anatomy and Physiology-the study of the structure and function of plants.

8.     Plant Cell Biology-the study of the structure and function of cells.

9.     Plant Genetics-the study of genetic inheritance in plants.

10.  Plant Pathology-the study of diseases in plants.

11.  Pteridology- the study of ferns and their relatives.

Each of the subdivisions relates to one or the other aspect, and with the exception  of none each of them is important for the scholars of Botany.

Plants: Paramount Concern of Botany

Plants and their study is the paramount concern of Botany. The importance of plants is all approved as the most essential need of human beings. Plants are very important ecologically, because they are the primary producers of virtually every ecosystem. Every animal, even carnivores, ultimately depends on the plants in their environment. Without them the herbivores would have nothing to eat, and then the predators wouldn't have herbivores to eat. Knowing the plants in the environment gives you a basis of understanding in how their populations fluctuate with environmental conditions, how they interact with one another, how they react to herbivores and how they respond to different types of disturbance. The implications of these understandings are far-ranging.

Many plants are useful to humans medicinally. Different plants produce different compounds that we can use to benefit our health. Asprin is just one example out of thousands. What's more is that there are many compounds still out there that we are unaware of, especially in places where biodiversity is very high, and largely unexplored, like tropical rainforests. Who knows what miracle drugs are out there waiting to be discovered? Botanists are a major part of this discovery process. On the other side of things, many plants produce compounds that are highly toxic to us and to our livestock. Botany leads us to knowing which plants we should be aware of, avoid eating, or remove from grazing lands.

Many plants are endangered, due to human land-use changes, disruption of the connections between populations, loss of pollinators, over-harvesting, and climate change. Knowing everything we can about these plants, including which of them are actually endangered and why, can help us conserve these species. Again, they might even prove to be highly valuable to us if they have unique medicinal compounds, but we will never know if they go extinct. Plants are also highly valuable in our understanding of evolution, not just of plants, but also of the animals that rely on them. Knowing plants, and how they are related to each other, gives us a more clear picture of how our living world got to where it is today.

Scientists interested in genetics and evolution can see how plants have adapted to innumerable habitats over their long history. Taxonomists try to trace this same family tree, originally by relying on structural similarities between plants, but increasingly by relying on DNA sequencing. In one of the more spectacular evolutionary breakthroughs in the history of life, vascular plants evolved nectar-bearing flowers to entice insects to bring pollen to them. There are countless clever variations on this theme, including plants that can change sex as conditions change. Plants may reproduce clonally, or by suckering. Their seeds may become airborne on tiny parachutes, or hitch rides by hooking onto passing animals, or lie dormant in the soil for half a century, awaiting suitable growing conditions. Some species hurl seeds to spread them; others explode like miniature grenades.

Deciduous plants drop their leaves in winter so snow cannot accumulate on them. Drought deciduous plants drop leaves during extremely dry periods to avoid losing water through them. Creosote bushes, among others, may extend roots 30 feet down or more in search of limited water. Cacti and other succulents have thick, leathery leaves that store water against drought. Not all plants are photosynthetic. Some prey on other plants, some on insects. Some absorb nutrients directly out of the air and rainwater.

Plants have an impressive variety of defense mechanisms too. Many are poisonous to eat. Some are poisonous to touch, a few so much so as to be extremely dangerous. Others secrete poisons into the soil to discourage the growth of other plants. Some literally strangle the competition. Some grow so quickly that they capture the available sunlight. Thorns are common. A few species even provide nectar to insects that in turn defend the plant against predators.

Anything that affects the body has potential as a medicine. Aspirin from the bark of willow trees, digitalis for the heart from foxglove, morphine from opium, are a few from a long list. Depending on how you count, there are about 40,000 plant species in North America alone. Only a handful have been evaluated for possible medical benefits. Some plants, of course, are psychoactive. How many? If you thought maybe 25, you’re off a little. Over 400 are known. Many of these are medicines for neurological or psychiatric disorders, another nearly untapped category.

Horticulturists are interested in plants for aesthetic reasons, and use knowledge of plant genetics and selective breeding to create new species for their beauty, hardiness, or sometimes for their potential as crops. Consider for a moment that a few dozen species account for 95% of the plants we eat. Foragers know that the range of edible plants is much larger, and nobody knows how much larger.

Wood evolved to get the leaves of trees up above competing plants, but it is infinitely useful. It provides shelter and refuge to animals. To people, it serves as structural material, for flooring, furniture, instruments, tools, and carvings. Some varieties of wood seem nearly weightless, while others are almost as dense and heavy as metal. Dyes made from woods and other plant materials have been immensely valuable in the past. Wood is so versatile that is remains essential despite great strides in synthetic materials engineering.

Plants thrive in the climate conditions for which they first evolved. Horticulturists divide countries into climate zones. Over time, global warming is forcing these zones north and south, away from the equator, and the ranges of species are moving along in tandem. Short-living species move along with changing weather fairly easily, but long-lived species cannot, one reason many species of trees are dying.

Botanical Studies

1.     ‘Salbutamol significantly (p < 0.05) increased the level of serum cardiac biomarkers (ALT, CK-MB, AST and LDH) and lipids (LDL, triglycerides, cholesterol) in rabbits. The prior and post administration of herbal mixture significantly (p < 0.05) lowered the elevated level of serum cardiac biomarkers and lipids equal to normal control. Gross pathological examination revealed that heart of salbutamol control animals became hardened, congested and were enlarged than preventive and curative groups. The phytotherapeutic analysis of medicinal plants revealed the presence of phenols, tannins, alkaloids and steroids.’¹

2.     ‘Plant diversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, resulting in an associated decrease in ecosystem services. About a third of the world's vascular plant species face the threat of extinction due to a variety of devastating activities, including, over-harvesting and over exploitation, destructive agricultural and forestry practices, urbanization, environmental pollution, land-use changes, exotic invasive species, global climate change, and more. We therefore need to increase our efforts to develop integrative conservation approaches for plant species conservation. Botanical gardens devote their resources to the study and conservation of plants, as well as making the world's plant species diversity known to the public. These gardens also play a central role in meeting human needs and providing well-being.’²

3.     ‘Windham et al. (2020) provide a detailed protocol for meiotic chromosome counts, a technique that has been underutilized in recent years but requires minimal lab equipment, and is simple and very effective once mastered. Similarly, correlations between spore size and genome size in ferns can be used to develop estimates for relative genome size, with enough resolution to infer ploidy (Barrington et al., 2020), allowing evolutionary history to be explored with minimal equipment and training.’³

4.     ‘The importance of understanding plant life is increasing. Plants play critical roles in maintaining the carbon balance in the atmosphere, and they form the base of food pyramids throughout the world (1, 2). Food, water, and energy shortages can also be linked to plants (or a lack thereof). Low botanical diversity in diets is a major contributor to the decreasing quality of human nutrition, linked to the proliferation of a multitude of health problems (3). It is essential that students learn to perceive plants as partners in the continued functioning of a healthy planet and society.’⁴

5.     ‘The most important problem of ethnobotanical studies of ancient texts written in extinct languages is the botanical identification of ancient plant names (phytonyms), by which we mean revealing the correspondence of an ancient phytonym to any biological taxon or group of taxa in their modern sense. Our task was to develop methodological principles for such studies.’⁵

6.     ‘In order to characterize the population of herbaria-users characterized in terms of demographic indicators, we explored the SiCyTAR database, and found that 5.5% of the results obtained were biologists, of which 1.1% corresponded to botanists, following the global tendency (Woodland, 2007). Sixty-six per cent of the botanists were women and 52% were under 50 years old. Forty-one percent of them worked in the Province of Buenos Aires (including the city of Buenos Aires). Of the total number of researchers, 27% were affiliated to a University. To narrow down the search, focus was put on researchers affiliated to CONICET. In the last 15 years, the number of CONICET researchers has increased from 4,000 to 10,000. Biologists constituted 10.6% of the total (including all subdisciplines) and, of this population, only 4.3% were botanists (0.46% of all the researchers, or 51 people).’⁶

7.     ‘Edward O. Wilson famously stated that ‘[…] for every scientific question, there is the ideal study system to test it’ and thus, the choice of a researcher to study one species or another is often driven by functional criteria (for example, ploidy level for genetics studies and ease of growth under controlled conditions). Still, outside of the laboratory or the greenhouse, field scientists may be challenged in their choice of focus organisms by concerns that exceed strictly scientific research interests. As a result, when plant scientists select to study a specific wild plant among the pool of species available in a given study region, it may be that factors unrelated to the biological question end up influencing species choice and introducing biases in the research outcome.’⁷

8.     ‘It is shown that botanical illustrations presented in postmodern alphabets do not reflect the morphological features of plants. When depicting plants, the author uses the technique of deconstructing images presented in ancient botanical atlases. Fragments of botanical illustrations are placed against the background of everyday scenes of the 19th century, including those of a fantasy nature. The structural components of the botanical educational book, its content and ironic author's comments are considered. The description of plants is pseudo-academic: the texts are surreal, they combine fiction and truth, fantasy and the specifics of the action. It is concluded that the irony of the comments does not contribute to the formation of the foundations of the natural science worldview.’⁸

9.     ‘National government remains the most important source of funding of institutions that employ botanists, and expects the institutions that they fund to become more self-reliant by securing additional finance from other sources for their research budget. Although most botanists in South Africa work independently, group research programmes have become necessary to address larger projects that have prescribed budget and time frames. There is a need for improvement in inter-institutional research collaboration in South Africa, in conformity with global trends. There is concern about the inadequate state of expertise and equipment. Well-equipped laboratories and the best expertise can only be secured by appropriate financial support, in most cases from government.’⁹

10.  ‘About 48- plant species belonging to 45- genera and 29- families of medicinal plants related to folk medicine used by the local people. Among them the most common plants viz., Asparagus racemosus Willd., Cissus quadrangularis L., Gymnema sylvestre R. Br., Hemidesmus indicus (L.) R. Br., Justisia adhatoda L., Ocimum sanctum L., Phyllanthes amarus Schum. & Thonn., Piper nigrum L., Solanum nigrum L., Tinospora cordifolia (Thunb.) Miers, Tridax procumbens L. and Zingiber officinale Roscoe which are used in their daily life to cure various ailments.’¹⁰

Conclusion

The scientific method is important because it is a systematic and objective approach to discovering new knowledge and understanding the natural world. It involves making observations, developing hypotheses, testing predictions through experimentation, and analyzing data to draw conclusions. This approach helps to ensure that scientific findings are reliable, repeatable, and unbiased. Additionally, the scientific method allows for ongoing refinement and correction of previous findings, helping to promote the advancement of scientific knowledge. The scientific method is really just an extension of the rational approach to finding things out. This probably didn’t originate with humans, and it must have been around since prehistoric times at least.

The study of plants is important because they are a fundamental part of life on Earth, generating food, oxygen, fuel, medicine and fibers that allow other life forms to exist. Through photosynthesis they absorb carbon dioxide, a waste product generated by most animals and a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Plants can be studied scientifically only through the use of scientific method.

To sum up: All the botanical studies conducted all over the world are experimental in nature, and are possible only through the use of the scientific method which ensures the scientific nature of a work. While conducting a botanical study, a botanist needs to be familiar with all the steps of scientific method, and ought to observe all those steps of scientific method. In a word, all the botanical studies in the world are made through scientific method as they are generally experimental for which a lot of lab work is required. It is only the required experimentation of the object or objects that the generalization is made.

Footnotes

1.     Nida Liaqat, Nazish Jahan, Khalil ur Rahman, Iqra Tahseen, Tauseef Anwar & Huma Qureshi- Investigation of phytotherapeutic potential of herbal mixtures and their effects on salbutamol induced cardiotoxicity and hyperlipidemia in rabbits, Botanical Studies volume 64, Article number: 23 (2023)

2.     Gao Chena, and Weibang Suna- The role of botanical gardens in scientific research, conservation, and citizen science, Plant Divers. 2018 Aug; 40(4): 181–188.

3.     Gillian H. Dean, Alice N. Muriithi, and Theresa M. Culley- Conducting botanical research with limited resources: Low‐cost methods in the plant sciences, Appl Plant Sci. 2020 Apr; 8(4): e11341.

4.     Laura A. Hyatt-Personal Plants: Making Botany Meaningful by Experimentation, SCIENCE, 28 Sep 2012, Vol 337, Issue 6102, pp. 1620-1621

5.     Alexey N. Sorokin- Scientific methods for identification of plants mentioned in ancient texts (as exemplified by biblical phytonymics), November 2019 HORTUS BOTANICUS 14(1):61-72

6.     Alicia López, Agostina B. Sassone- The Uses of Herbaria in Botanical Research. A Review Based on Evidence From Argentina, Front. Plant Sci., Sec. Plant Systematics and Evolution, Volume 10 - 2019

7.     Martino Adamo, Matteo Chialva, Jacopo Calevo, Filippo Bertoni, Kingsley Dixon & Stefano Mammola- Plant scientists’ research attention is skewed towards colourful, conspicuous and broadly distributed flowers, Nature Plants volume 7, pages574–578 (2021)

8.     Olga Fedotova and Vladimir Latun- Deconstructive approach in the presentation of

botanical knowledge in educational materials for students, E3S Web of Conferences 273, INTERAGROMASH 12020 (2021)

9.     C.L. Bredenkamp & G.F. Smith- Botanical research in South Africa: a questionnaire assessment of opinions of South African botanists, S. Afr. j. sci. vol.104 n.3-4 Pretoria Mar./Apr. 2008

10.  M Parthipan, V Aravindhan, and A Rajendran- Medico - botanical study of Yercaud hills in the eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India, Anc Sci Life. 2011 Apr-Jun; 30(4): 104–109.

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