What careers paths are there for a plant pathology major? A friend of mine, she’s debating what to major in. She’s interested in plant pathology, but she’s worried about her career options. Her family wants her to go into pharmacy. Can anyone give some advice? Thank you so much!
For a while my daughter was interested in possibly working in agrochemical or food manufacturing. Her intended path for that was through chemical engineering with a specialized concentration later. She has since changed her mind but we did look at a lot of schools that had agricultural engineering programs and the like. I would suggest to your friend to reach out to some of the universities and talk through the questions. Our experience was that departments and profs were very open to talking through questions like this. Cornell, OSU, Purdue, U of WI, UC Davis, all have solid programs. Also a quick google search yielded this: https://study.com/articles/Plant_Pathology_Career_Options_and_Education_Requirements.html
My D. is interested in plant biology / science – particularly things like food nutrition (apparently food plants are becoming less nutritious – ack!) and adaptability to climate change. She comes at it from a global health perspective. She’s pretty interested in genetics of plants too. I know Bill Gates is on the record saying life science and energy development are the two areas where we need more scientists. In particular, so many kids are into biomedical engineering – which is cool and helpful – but we need more agricultural and energy scientists to address the big challenges facing the world. If I can find the link I’ll post it.
My D. is attending liberal arts college to get strong bio foundation and, if she stays on this path, will look at places like Cornell and UC Davis for grad school – or maybe in Europe where there’s is so much focus on this.
This wasn’t about plant pathology exactly, but I hope it helps!
I will tell her. Thank you guys so much!