Monday, June 18, 2012

Plant Technology and Maintanence

Artificial Selection: selecting the desire traits of a plant, and only breed the plants that have the desired traits
  • mass selection: selecting the largest and biggest
  • pure line selection: selecting certain traits
  • cross-breeding: breeding two plants that have two different desired traits

Tissue Culturing Technology
  • Obtain cells from the meristem
  • Grow the cells through mitosis. The mass of cell is called a callus
  • Apply hormones such as auxin and cytokinin so that roots and shoots can grow

Gene transfer: splicing the genes of one species into another to get the desired traits
  • Cold resistant gene: obtained from a kind of fish
  • Bt gene: codes for proteins that paralyze and kill insects
Monoculture: When a farmland is only used to grow one kind of prop. This creates problems, as the nutrients in the soil will get depleted

Solutions:
  • Crop rotation: rotate the kind of crops grown on a farmland. Different crops will require different nutrients
  • Farm manure: spread animal wastes on soil
  • Plant manure: crops are planted but not harvested
  • Fertilizers: Inorganic minerals that contain the missing nutrients from the soil

Pest Control
  • Pesticide: killing the bugs using chemicals
  • Sex attractant control: make the male bugs infertile
  • Biological control: introduce other species that can kill the pests
  • Hydroponic environment: grow the plants such that the roots are underwater