Single word for collective knowledge of plants and cultivation?

Question

I've been trying to find one single word that covers knowledge concerning both the properties and cultivation of plants, but have come short with some words.

Here are some of the words I thought of, but eventually found lacking:

Botany: I feel this implies purely scientific research on plants, ignoring the cultivation of plants and things like crop rotations and irrigation techniques.

Agriculture: I think this word only covers food crops and plants commonly grown for decoration. I feel it misses out on the more thorough knowledge of all (not just commonly cultivated) plants, including currently unknown ones.

Ultimately, I'm looking for a word that encompasses the subjects of both Botany and Agriculture, but have come short for now.

Answer 1

Looking into this, I just learned a new word:

Agronomy

Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fibre, and land reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology, chemistry, economics, ecology, earth science, and genetics. Agronomists today are involved with many issues including producing food, creating healthier food, managing environmental impact of agriculture, and extracting energy from plants. Agronomists often specialize in areas such as crop rotation, irrigation and drainage, plant breeding, plant physiology, soil classification, soil fertility, weed control, and insect and pest control.

(Emphasis mine)

Answer 2

Horticulture

Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and non-food crops such as grass and ornamental trees and plants. It also includes plant conservation, landscape restoration, landscape and garden design, construction, and maintenance, and arboriculture.

Horticulturists apply their knowledge, skills, and technologies used to grow intensively produced plants for human food and non-food uses and for personal or social needs. Their work involves plant propagation and cultivation with the aim of improving plant growth, yields, quality, nutritional value, and resistance to insects, diseases, and environmental stresses. They work as gardeners, growers, therapists, designers, and technical advisors in the food and non-food sectors of horticulture.

Answer 3

Granted, it's not a single word, but plant sciences would seem to encompass both areas. That's a department name in US universities, for example.

Answer 4

The term that you are looking for is agricultural botany. It is the discipline that combines botany and agriculture. It is not a single word but it is sometimes shortened as agri-botany.

The final "new" branch of Botany is which we must briefly mention, at least so that its historical links can be seen, is agricultural botany. Here, after nearly 200 years, we find the University accepting and catering for a scientific approach to crop cultivation for which the first professor of Botany, Richard Bradley, had hoped in vain.

_{The Shaping of Cambridge Botany By Stuart Max Walters, John Stevens Henslow}

There is even a National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, UK. There is also an agricultural botany department in several universities including University of Reading, University of Zagreb and Czech University of Life Sciences.

Horticulture covers some scientific approaches to plant cultivation but it doesn't cover all the scientific studies of botany. In other words, it doesn't cover botany; hence there is a field called horticultural botany. It is defined in Wikipedia as the study of the botany of current and potential cultivated plants, with emphasis on the ornamental plants of horticulture, by a horticultural botanist or plantsman—plantsperson.