Transcript Plants and Photosynthesis

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Plants for Food
W Richards
The Weald School
Food chains
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A food chain shows where the energy goes in a food chain (in
other words, “what gets eaten by what”):
Cabbage
Rabbit
Plants convert the
sun’s energy into food
Stoat
Fox
The arrows indicate where
the energy is going
Plants are called “producers” – they “produce” the energy for
the rest of the food chain through photosynthesis.
Using plants for food
Fruits and
seeds
Roots
Leaves
Stems
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Helping plants to grow
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Farmers can use a number of chemicals to help plants to grow:
Advantages
Disadvantages
1) Fertilisers
Provide nutrients
2) Herbicides
Kill weeds
Too much of it can kill
pond life
Disrupt
food
chains
3) Pesticides
Kill pests
Disrupt food chains
Another disadvantage of pesticides
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Insecticides can wash into a stream or lake where they are
taken up by microscopic water plants. Consider the food chain:
Small plants
Marine insects
Fish
Kingfisher
Although the level of insecticides in the plants is small, it
will build up through the food chain due to the number of
organisms in each stage.