Transcript How Do Plants Affect People?

Backgrounds and Graphics by Torin and Bakari Olivetti
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How Do Plants Affect People?
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•Plants affect
baboons also!
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Beverages**
Medicines
Flavorings
Fragrances
Dyes
Poisons**
Decorations
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• _______ Species of Flowering Plants
• ________ are Edible
• Only ~ ___ Major Food Crops…
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• …was the critical step in the
development of __________?…
• What type of crops were most
important???? __________?
• Wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, manioc, sweet potatoes provide ____?
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Secondary Xylem
• Build your house..
• Heat your house…
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• Using Plants to Clean, Fix,
Environmental Problems.
• Example: Metal Accumulating
Plants clean contaminated soil.
• Zinc, cadmium, lead, mercury, etc
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Examples of Genetic Engineering
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Adding a New Trait is as Simple as
Inserting a New Gene
• Caveats???????
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How People Have Used Plants
Through Time?
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Eat plants that you find..
Cultivate…
Selection of phenotypes…
Breeding… crosses for traits…
Genetic Engineering… designer plants…
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Botany 4 Lecture #38
The Impact of
Humans on Plants
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How Have Humans Changed Plants?
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Changing Plants**
• Increase oil content or sweetness or
decrease fat or add a gene or pest
resistance or phenotype or reduce
variability or increase variability,
selectively, introduce invasive plants,
promote evolution, retard evolution.
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Both Good and Bad..+ or - ?
• Deforestation, Fragmentation, Habitat Destruction
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Artificial Selection
Hybridization / Crosses / Genetic Engineering
Cultivation / Propagation / Agriculture
Extinction / Prevention of Extinction
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Rosy Periwinkle
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Rapid deforestation destroys biodiversity — and many species' promise for
the human race.
Off the southeast coast of Africa lies the massive island of Madagascar.
The ancient forests of the island's central plateau are home to the rosy
periwinkle, a plant that stands only a foot tall at maturity. Its tiny flowers
and shiny, green leaves distinguish it no more than its height, yet the rosy
periwinkle has become famous throughout the world, particularly in
medical circles. In the 1950s, scientists isolated chemicals produced in the
plant that are extremely effective in fighting childhood leukemia and
Hodgkin's disease. The rosy periwinkle contains over 70 alkaloids with
medical applications such as lowering blood sugar levels, slowing
bleeding, and tranquilizing.
Although stable wild populations of rosy periwinkles still grow in
Madagascar, mass deforestation due to poor agricultural practices is
rapidly depleting the island's native dry tropical forest habitat and
threatening its unique plant and animal species. Slash-and-burn farming
has been standard practice for many years as a means of converting forest
areas to crop fields. Some scientists estimate that at the current rate of
destruction, almost all of Madagascar's forests could be lost within 25
years. As recently as ten years ago, precious topsoil run off, perhaps as
great as one hundred tons an acre each year, could be seen from space, a
distinctive red in the surrounding ocean. Conservationists are searching
for ways to help Madagascar's people better sustain their island's
treasures. Ecotourism and sustainable farming offer some hope but
neither alleviates Madagascar's most pressing problem of a rapidly
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multiplying population.
Habitat Fragmentation
• Produces Many Small Populations…
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Effects of Agriculture on Plants?
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Why Does a Species
Become Extinct?
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Avoiding Extinction:
“Living Fossils”
• Cycads and Ginkgo…..
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This semester we
• Looked at all levels of Plant Biology from
atoms to ecosystems….
• Looked at Plant biology through many
disciplines from biochemistry to anatomy to
physiology to genetics to ecology, etc.
• Made many observations and asked many
questions…
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• Consider all that you do all day. Is there
anything you do all day that can’t be
connected to plants?
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In my very first botany class in 1970
• Dr. Oostenink asked a question.
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Have you
Thanked a
Green Plant
Today?
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And now for a little fun…
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