Sorry could not write for long.
In Univ of Mumbai when you have to do graduation in science you have to take admission for B.Sc. Course in any college affiliated to Univ and attend the college regularly. We don't have correspondance course in all sc subjects. Though we have distance education B. Sc. course for IT and comp.
Unless you do your B.Sc. You can't take admission for M.Sc. Whether by papers or research. So Ph. D. Is next to it.
But just aquiring Ph. D. Does not mean you have lot of knowledge or you have gained it. What I feel is, you felt like doing Ph. D. To get knowledge. Actually in the above mentioned courses you will waste (?) Your 3+2+3(?) =8 yrs further. Instead my suggestion will be diff. You can do small courses to acquire basic knowlege of Botany as from BNHS, or UNIV of Mumbai distance education course of tree appreciation, horticulture and gardening, even it is in our college.
And study on your own once you know basic terminologies. Wikipedia, google and best is eflora which will help you to understand better.
Focus on some aspect of Botany , collect data and can publish your papers in research journals. 75% people on eflora who send best photographs and perfect ids are not botanists but are engineers, doctors, dentists, comp engineers, zoologists etc ect. And they contribute equal to botanists on the group and even write best refered books on flora
So for getting knowledge Ph.D is not must. Hence I said why waste(?) Time? Start studying.
Some courses on ecology are available for distance learning from Delhi.
Best of Luck.
Madhuri
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:31:10 +0530
Subject: Re: [efloraofindia:75150] Re: Some suggestion regarding doing Botany