Questions for Lecture 3: Nutrition and Transport in Plants: (A) Transport of Sugars; and (B) Plant Nutrition, mostly mineral nutrition

By the end of your preparation of these topics, you should be able to:

Part A
1. Define the terms translocation, source and sink, and describe the structure of phloem (Sieve tube elements and companion cells).
2. Discuss the mechanism of transport of sugars, including the phloem loading part involving active transport and transporters.
3. Discuss the differences between water transport in xylem (unidirectional) and sugar transport (bidirectional) in phloem.

Part B

4. Discuss the major functions of the essential macro- and micro-nutrients for plant growth.
5. Discuss how the method of hydroponics has been useful in establishing whether or not a nutrient is essential.
6. Make some educated guesses as to the nature of the possible mineral deficiency by looking at the visual characteristics of the plants.
7. Describe two important mutualisms involved in nutrient acquisition particularly for nitrogen (N2 fixing bacteria) and phosphorus (mycorrhizae).

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.