Questions for Lecture 2: Transport in Plants: Water, Water Uptake and Transport

By the end of your preparation of this topic, you should be able to:

1. Discuss the physical properties of water including how water molecules associate (i.e., hydrogen bonds; adhesion and cohesion).
2. Discuss the structure and characteristics of three special elements of plant cells: cell walls, vacuoles and chloroplasts.
3. Discuss and differentiate between diffusion, osmosis, active transport and bulk flow of materials.
4. Present a description of the anatomy of root, stem and leaves needed to understand the uptake and transport of water in plants.
5. Describe the concept of water potential, osmotic potential, turgor potential, and plasmolysis.
6. Describe the relationship of water potential to the physiology of the plant.
7. Describe the mechanism by which water moves from the soil to the outside of a leaf: theory that includes transpiration pull, and cohesion and adhesion properties of water.
8. Define the following concepts and terms: apoplastic (movement though cell walls); symplastic (movement across plasma membranes); units of pressure (bar; megapascal, MPa = 10 bars or atmosphere).

Outline of presentation :

For outline of presentation and for the legends of figures, see the Handbook for the course "Biology 121 Notes, Spring, 1998, University of Illinois, Plant Biology: Ecology and Organismic Plant Biology" by Govindjee, Stipes Publishing, Champaign, IL.

For this lecture's slides, click here.