The Department of Field Crops was established in 2009. In the department, undergraduate and graduate education is provided in the field of cultivation and breeding of field crops, and 30-35 undergraduate students are admitted each year. After undergraduate education is completed, the graduates are awarded the title of “Agricultural Engineer”. After the completion of the Master’s Degree program, the students are entitled to receive the title of “Agricultural Engineer (MSc.)”. At the end of the PhD education, they deserve the “PhD. Degree in Agriculture”. 3 Professors, 1 Associate Professor, 2 Assistant Professors and one Research Assistant are working at the department. Faculty members of the department carry out studies in such areas as growing and breeding cereals and edible legumes, forage crops and industrial crops, meadow-pasture management and breeding, plant breeding at traditional and molecular levels, organic farming, tissue culture and gene transfer.
For the researches carried out at the department, the research unit includes a plant and feed analysis laboratory, cereals and edible legumes laboratory, oil analysis laboratory, tissue culture laboratory, molecular genetics and biochemistry laboratory and climate room. The researchers and students can make use of laminar cabin, autoclave, spectrophotometer, climate cabin, muffle furnace, ovens, feed quality analyzer, soxhlet device, essential oil determination unit, GS-MS, HPLC, horizontal and vertical electrophoresis, gel imaging device, PCR, centrifuges, water-bath, shaker, heated and cooled incubators, light microscopes, imaging studio, refrigerators and -80 ℃ and -20 ℃ deep freezers in laboratories.
The aim of the department is to train nationally and internationally respected agricultural engineers who are equipped with the knowledge required by the rapidly developing science and technology in the field of field crops and the skills to transfer this information into practice and who have the ability to analyze and synthesize when necessary.
Graduates of the department can be employed in other private sector agricultural companies, operating especially in the field of seed growing and breeding, other state institutions, mainly the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, universities, public interest associations and cooperatives, banks and agricultural consultancy offices.
