Agriculture

Review: Plant Factors Influencing the Rate of Transpiration

There are various factors affecting the rate of transpiration in plants, particularly stomatal transpiration.

These are divided into plant factors and environmental factors.

The plant factors refer to inherent characteristics of plants and include root-shoot ratio, leaf area, leaf structure, and their inherent ability with respect to the opening and closing of stomata.

These factors are also described as internal, their manifestation being dictated by the genetic factor of plant growth and development.

The environmental factors are treated on another page. A link is provided at the bottom of this page.

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Biotic Factors and Their Interaction With Plants

Biotic factors refer to the living organisms that affect plant growth and development in various ways.

These organisms, both macro-and micro-organisms, are the living components of the environment that influence the manifestation of the genetic factor on phenotypic expression.

Macroorganisms refer to the animals such as humans and other mammals, birds, insects, arachnids, mollusks, and plants while microorganisms include fungi, bacteria, viruses, and nematodes.

The effects of these biotic factors on plant expression may be advantageous or disadvantageous, depending on how they interact with the plant.

These interactions include mutualism, herbivory, parasitism, and allelopathy.

Click here to read on separate window update on how microbes can boost agricultural yields

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Contribution to the History of Photosynthesis: Joseph Black

Joseph Black (1728–1799) was a British physician and chemist who is credited for discovering carbon dioxide, a chemical reactant in photosynthesis, although it was then called “fixed air”.

He also takes credit for having discovered specific heat and latent heat.

Black was born in Bordeaux, France of Scottish descent. At the age of 14, he studied Latin and Greek in Belfast.

At the age of 16 in 1744, he enrolled at Glasgow University to study arts but shifted to medicine in 1748.

He was employed by William Cullen, the professor of medicine, as his laboratory assistant.

Cullen started giving lectures in chemistry in the preceding year (1747), although chemistry has not been taught in the university, and Black showed a passion for the discipline.

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Properties of Water: 1. Polarity and Hydrogen Bondinglist of Some Agricultural Crops and Animals With Their Diploid Chromosome Number

The chromosome number is one of the primary bases of hybridization in agricultural crops as well as in animals.

The diploid numbers of chromosomes are essentially constant within the same species.

It is an important topic of review in basic plant breeding.

Illustration of the physical structure of the chromosome
Illustration of the physical structure of the chromosome

It is the general rule that successful crosses are easier to achieve between individual plants under the same species rather than between different species under the same genus (interspecific cross).

Consequently, it is more difficult to produce an intergeneric hybrid. In sum, individuals which are closely related taxonomically are much easier to cross. 

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Properties of Water: 1. Polarity and Hydrogen Bonding

What are the various properties of water?

A fluid that is most abundant on earth, water plays an essential role in plant physiology and thus in crop agriculture.

Familiarity with these properties will further simplify understanding of water’s crucial roles.

Water is essential to the life of all organisms as well as the main factor in ensuring crop productivity
Water is essential to the life of all organisms as well as the main factor in ensuring crop productivity

First, the polarity of the water molecule and its hydrogen-bonding properties.

Water is a multimolecule, comprising various molecules of water bonded to one another.

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Contour Farming Is the Rule in Sloping Agricultural Lands, Also Makes Farm Operations Possible

What is Contour Farming?

Contour farming is a technology, a practice, or a system in sloping agricultural lands whereby crop rows are oriented perpendicular to or across the slope of the land.

Both in short-maturing annual crops, e.g., corn, and in perennial crops, e.g., coconut, the same rule applies.

Now there are special terms for relevant farming practices such as contour-hedgerow farming, contour-hedgerow-strip farming, and sloping agricultural land technology or SALT.

Planting in contour lines is the rule in sloping lands because if otherwise, the rows are in lines running from top to bottom, and the soil will be eroded downhill by wind and water.

But that is not all.

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What Is a Grass? Are There Grass Flowers?

Yes, there are grass flowers and all grasses have or possess the ability to produce flowers.

But this conclusion only leads to many questions.

Why don’t we see flowers in these plants? Does Zoysia (also called Bermuda grass) really produce flowers? How about rice and corn? And bamboo?

Well, well, well. These questions are really both easy and excruciatingly difficult.

It largely depends on how botanically prepared is the asker. And more so for the asked and answered.

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Agriculture Dominates the Main Uses of Water, Some Issues Need to Be Addressed

The main use of water, that is, liquid freshwater, is in agriculture.

This is clear based on the statistics from the United Nations, notably UN-Water and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 

70% of the world's fresh water is used in agriculture.
70% of the world’s freshwater is used in agriculture.

UN-Water, through its website unwater.org (2011c), summarized how water is used worldwide:

  • 70% of the world’s fresh water is used in agriculture,
  • 22% by industry, and
  • 8% for domestic use.

This means that crop and livestock production absorbed the bulk of the uses of water.

This usage largely consists of irrigation.

About 70% of this agricultural use of water comes from aquifers, streams, and lakes.

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What Is Sugar Vs. Carbohydrate, Types and Comparative Sweetness

What is sugar?

Sweetness is always the first thing that comes to mind in responding to the question or in contemplating what is sugar.

In ordinary usage, sugar is the common term for sucrose, those brownish granules or fine white crystals that bear the name brown sugar or refined sugar with which coffee, milk, and other drinks are sweetened.

Being processed from raw materials, it is likewise described as an industrial product with varied uses, particularly in food science including as a preservative.

In studying basic physiology in plants, sugar is commonly used interchangeably with carbohydrates.

Both words are used to refer to the product of photosynthesis which stores the energy obtained from the sun and the carbon fixed from the atmosphere.

However, sugars are only a subset of carbohydrates. The question What is sugar? therefore ought to settle on what is carbohydrate.

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Jackfruit Is Potentially a Promising Cash Crop

Jackfruit or jack (Artocarpus heterophyllus), also known as jacquier, kathal, langka, nangka, khanun, makmi, banun, nongko, kapiak and peignai, is a plant that probably originated from the Western Ghats in India.

It has become naturalized in many tropical countries, mostly in Southeast Asia where it is considered a major fruit.

Where food is scarce, it is utilized as a staple.

This fruit crop is adapted to warm and humid climates below 1000 masl, but it can thrive up to 1600 meters.

It has a poor cold, drought, and flooding tolerance but has moderate tolerance to wind and salinity.

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