Human nutrition[edit]aazzqq

The food we eat comes directly or indirectly from plants such as rice.

Further information: Human nutrition Virtually all staple foods come either directly from primary production by plants, or indirectly from animals [63] that eat them. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms are at the base of most food chains because they use the energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and atmosphere, converting them into a form [64] that can be used by animals. This is what ecologists call the first trophic level. The modern forms of the [65] major staple foods, such as bananas, plantains, maize and other cereal grasses, and pulses, as well as flax and cotton grown for their fibres, are the outcome of prehistoric selection over thousands of years [66] from among wild ancestral pants with the most desirable characteristics. Botanists study how plants produce food and how to increase yields, for example throughplant breeding, making their work important [67] to mankind's ability to feed the world and provide food security for future generations. Botanists also study weeds, which are a considerable problem in agriculture, and the biology and control of plant [68] pathogens in agriculture and naturalecosystems. Ethnobotany is the study of the relationships between plants and people. When applied to the investigation of historical plantpeople relationships ethnobotany [69] may be referred to as archaeobotany or palaeoethnobotany.

Plant biochemistry[edit]
Plant biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes used by plants. Some of these processes are used in their primary metabolism like the photosynthetic Calvin cycle and crassulacean acid [70] metabolism. Others make specialized materials like the cellulose and lignin used to build their bodies, and secondary products like resins and aroma compounds.

Plants make variousphotosynthetic pigments, some of which can be seen here through paper chromatography. Xanthophylls Chlorophyll a Chlorophyll b

Plants and various other groups of photosynthetic eukaryotes collectively known as "algae" have unique organelles known as chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are thought to be descended from cyanobacteria that formedendosymbiotic relationships with ancient plant and algal ancestors. Chloroplasts and [71] cyanobacteria contain the blue-green pigment chlorophyll a. Chlorophyll a (as well as its plant and [a] green algal-specific cousinchlorophyll b) absorbs light in the blue-violet and orange/red parts of the spectrum while reflecting and transmitting the green light that we see as the characteristic colour of these organisms. The energy in the red and blue light that these pigments absorb is used by chloroplasts to make energy-rich carbon compounds from carbon dioxide and water by oxygenic photosynthesis, a process that generates molecular oxygen (O2) as a by-product.
The Calvin cycle (Interactive diagram) The Calvin cycle incorporates carbon dioxide into sugar molecules.

RuBisCo

Carbon fixation

Reduction

3-phosphoglycerate

3-phosphoglycerate

Carbon dioxide

1,3-biphosphoglycerate Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (G3P)

Inorganic phosphate

Ribulose 5-phosphate

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate

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The light energy captured bychlorophyll a is initially in the form of electrons (and later aproton gradient) that's used to make molecules of ATP and NADPH which temporarily store and transport energy. Their energy is used in the light-independent reactions of the Calvin cycle by the enzymerubisco to produce molecules of the 3-carbon sugarGlyceraldehyde 3-phosphate(G3P). Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate is the first product of photosynthesis and the raw material from which glucoseand almost all other organic molecules of biological origin are synthesized. Some of the glucose is converted to starch which is stored [75] in the chloroplast. Starch is the characteristic energy store of most land plants and algae, while inulin, a

polymer offructose is used for the same purpose in in the sunflower familyAsteraceae. Some of the glucose is converted to sucrose(common table sugar) for export to the rest of the plant. Unlike in animals (which lack chloroplasts), plants and their eukaryote relatives have delegated many [76][77] biochemical roles to theirchloroplasts, including synthesizing all their fatty acids, and most amino [78] acids. The fatty acids that chloroplasts make are used for many things, such as providing material to build cell membranes out of and making the polymer cutin which is found in the plant cuticle that protects [79] land plants from drying out. Plants synthesize a number of unique polymers like [80] the polysaccharide molecules cellulose, pectin and xyloglucan from which the land plant cell wall is [81] constructed. Vascular land plants make lignin, a polymer used to strengthen the secondary cell wallsof xylem tracheids and vessels to keep them from collapsing when a plant sucks water through them under water stress. Lignin is also used in other cell types like sclerenchyma fibers that provide structural support for a plant and is a major constituent of wood.Sporopollenin is a chemically-resistant polymer found in the outer cell walls of spores and pollen of land plants responsible for the survival of early land plant spores and the pollen of seed plants in the fossil record. It is widely regarded as a marker for the start of land [82] plant evolution during the Ordovician period. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is much lower than it was when plants emerged onto land during the Ordovician and Silurian periods. Many monocots like maize and thepineapple and some dicots like [83] the Asteraceae have since independently evolved pathways like Crassulacean acid metabolismand the C4 carbon fixation pathway for photosynthesis which avoid the losses resulting from photorespiration in the more commonC3 carbon fixation pathway. These biochemical strategies are unique to land plants.