A series of post-graduate courses in crop production science has been conducted almost every year since 1979. The topics have changed through years, focusing on the most relevant issues of crop production at the time. Each course offers an opportunity for modellers and physiologists from the NOVA and BOVA regions to work together and develop further collaborations. NOVA involvement is necessary to ensure that the next generation of crop physiologists is fully capable of using modern modelling techniques to gain the maximum from their experimental results, and that the modellers are fully able to integrate the latest developments in crop physiology into their models. International cooperation is needed to bring together enough PhD students and academics in the subject area for such a course to be run.
The course aims to give PhD students knowledge of mathematical modelling of plants and crops. This skill is recognised as important in systems biology. The course will present recent examples where modelling links from the molecular to the cropping levels and will also focus on crop product quality. The effects of climate change will also be investigated. Students will become equipped for research and other jobs in a variety of areas that require a quantitative approach to biology.
On the course, students will learn how the basic phenomena of crop physiological and external factors together determine crop growth and yield. Models of climate change suggest that precipitation will be more unevenly (and unfavourably) distributed during the growing period of field crops in many regions. More precipitation will fall during the autumn, whereas spring and summer will be drier than at present. This will also result in changed radiation distribution. The other marked change will be increasing temperatures which will affect the growth of field crops, their overwintering and the quality of their yield.
As a special topic, the theory of changing temperatures and radiation in relation to plant growth will be studied and students will practice dynamic modelling. The cultivation component will be conducted as a distance-learning exercise using web-based teaching (WebCT). Thus the course will start 14th January 2008 and finish 11th April 2008. This period will include the cultivation exercise (10 weeks) and modelling exercise as well as intensive week in Helsinki (6 days).

Henrik Eckersten, SLU
Pirjo Mäkelä, Univ of Helsinki
John Porter, LIFE
Mervi Seppänen, Univ of Helsinki
Arne Skjelvåg, UMB
Frederick Stoddard , UMB