This Department belongs to the College of Life Sciences and is an important part of the State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology. Currently there are 19 faculty members including 10 professors, 5 associate professors, and 4 lecturers. Among these members, 9 are doctoral supervisors, and seven have oversea educational experiences. One faculty member was elected Top Ten Teacher in universities of Shandong province. One member won Young Teacher Award by the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation. One member won the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars. Two members were elected Taishan Scholar of Shandong province. One member was awarded Teaching Achievement Prize of Shandong Province. The faculty team was elected Advanced Teaching Team in 2011 and 2015, and won the first prize for Teaching Achievements of Shandong Province.

This Department offers Plant Physiology and Plant physiology Experiments courses for undergraduates and graduate students. In addition, the Department provides courses of Crop Photosynthesis and Production, Plant Stress Physiology, Advances in Plant Science Research, and Research Methods & Techniques of Plant Biology for graduate students.

In 1978, the Department was authorized to set up Master's Degree Programs in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry. In 1999, the Department was authorized to initiate Ph. D Degree Programs in Botany. Over the years, the Department has developed quickly and the levels of both teaching and scientific research have been increased greatly.

The Department focuses mainly on the following research fields: Photosynthesis and its molecular regulation, plant stress biology, molecular mechanisms of nitrate regulation in plants, secondary metabolism and plant defense，and light signal transduction in plants.

In the last five years, the department has successively obtained more than 40 scientific research grants , including the National Key Research and Development Program of China (973 Program), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program), the National Natural Science Funds, the international collaboration program, and natural science funds of Shandong province. The Department has published more than 200 research papers in high level national and international academic journals, such as Plant Cell, Molecular Plant, Plant Journal, Plant Physiology.

The Department aims to further improve the quality in training students and our research levels by promoting international exchanges and collaborations, training young faculty members, recruiting new talented scientists to make more contributions to our university and society.