Syllabus: Plant Physiology and Metabolism (Theory)
Course code BOT-DSM-511 · BSc 5th Semester · 60 hours · 5 units
Course objectives: to understand plant water relations, photosynthesis and respiration, and the basic concepts of enzymes, nitrogen metabolism and plant growth regulators.
Unit 1 — 14 hours
(a) Plant-water relations: Importance of water, water potential and its components; transpiration and its significance; factors affecting transpiration; root pressure and guttation.
(b) Mineral nutrition: Essential elements, macro and micronutrients; criteria of essentiality of elements; role of essential elements; transport of ions across cell membrane, active and passive transport, carriers, channels and pumps.
Unit 2 — Translocation in Phloem — 12 hours
Composition of phloem sap, girdling experiment; pressure flow model; phloem loading and unloading.
Unit 3 — 12 hours
(a) Photosynthesis: Photosynthetic pigments (Chl a, b, xanthophylls, carotene); Photosystem I and II, reaction center, antenna molecules; electron transport and mechanism of ATP synthesis; C3, C4 and CAM pathways of carbon fixation; photorespiration.
(b) Respiration: Glycolysis, anaerobic respiration, TCA cycle; oxidative phosphorylation, glyoxylate cycle, oxidative pentose phosphate pathway.
Unit 4 — 12 hours
(a) Enzymes: Structure and properties; mechanism of enzyme catalysis and enzyme inhibition.
(b) Nitrogen metabolism: Biological nitrogen fixation; nitrate and ammonia assimilation.
Unit 5 — 10 hours
(a) Plant growth regulators: Discovery and physiological roles of auxins, gibberellins, cytokinins, ABA, ethylene.
(b) Plant response to light and temperature: Photoperiodism (SDP, LDP, day neutral plants); phytochrome (discovery and structure), red and far-red light responses on photomorphogenesis; vernalization.
What your class notes missed
From the 46-page scanned notes (six pages were exact duplicates, so unique content was well under 46 pages, and the pages did not follow syllabus order):
- Entirely missing: Unit 2 phloem translocation; Unit 4 enzymes and nitrogen metabolism; Unit 3 respiration; Unit 5(b) photoperiodism, phytochrome and vernalization.
- Mostly missing: Unit 1 water potential, transpiration, root pressure and guttation, essential elements and their roles.
- Only partial: cytokinin (one bare start), pigments (chromatography only), C3/C4/CAM (Calvin cycle plus a largely illegible grouping diagram), electron transport (photophosphorylation strong, Z-scheme missing).
- Strong in the notes: auxin, gibberellin, ABA and ethylene roles; membrane and ion transport; photophosphorylation and ATP synthesis.
The unit pages teach the missing topics from scratch. The Dec 2025 paper asked most of its Section B and C questions on exactly the missing topics — water potential, phloem sap, enzyme catalysis, phytochrome, transpiration pull, nitrogen fixation, pressure flow, Z-scheme and oxidative phosphorylation — so do not skip them.