• Question: how does learning about plants help us understanding how plant work

    Asked by darkfighter to Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve, Yvette on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Steven Kiddle

      Steven Kiddle answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      When i say learning, i don’t mean from a book. I mean doing experiments, say finding out which varieties of a plant can survive high temperatures or disease. If one variety survives better you can look at the differences between the varieties to understand why one survives. This helps us to understand how they work.

    • Photo: Yvette Wilson

      Yvette Wilson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      not too sure what you mean, but will try my best to answer…There’s a huge amount that we need to understand about plants to 1) conserve them – so what environmental conditions do they need? what insects pollinate them? what other animals depend on them ? and 2) to use them for food and other products. For this we need to know all sorts of things like how do they fight disease and how can we help them fight it? can we find crop varieties with better nutritional qualities? and even what bacteria do their roots interact with to be able to take up nutrients?
      To answer many of these questions we use genetics as through disrupting what the plant does through getting a mutation in a gene, you can then piece together how things work based on how the plant has changed compared to normal plants.

    • Photo: Louise Johnson

      Louise Johnson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Sorry but I’m not sure I understand this question – could you maybe comment to let me know what exactly you’re asking?

    • Photo: Michaela Livingstone

      Michaela Livingstone answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      By looking at little bits of what plants do you can build up a big picture about how plants work in general. I don’t work on plants, Yvette and Steve will be able to answer your questions better, I think.

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