About us
The Department of Phytology cover academic subject areas of systematic botany, phytosociology, forest typology, vegetation dynamics and ecology, population and evolutionary genetics, forest tree breeding, embryology and forest tree species propagation, biotechnologies. Recently the interests of the Department expanded also to population, evolutionary and conservation genetics of game and wildlife species. Our overall goal is to contribute to the understanding biodiversity and to provide innovative and practical outputs that help to measure, manage and conserve this biodiversity.
History
In today’s Department of Phytology, specialists in coppice forest herb layer rub shoulders with molecular geneticists, and students can hear lectures by experts in epigenetics before examining biodiversity in university herbarium. This exceptional breadth results from the history of our department and excellent researchers who worked here, such as Dezider Magic, Dušan Randuška, Milan Križo, Eva Križová, Ladislav Paule. Botany and phytosociology were originally taught at the Department of botany and pedology, later called the Department of forest environment. In 1991 the Department of phytology was established with leading professor Milan Križo. After his retirement in 1996 professor Paule became the head of the department and since then also genetic subjects are taught here. In 2012 Karol Ujházy was appointed as the head of the department.