Biotechnology in agriculture - Essay Example

Essay No: Why are some fruits sweet and some sour, whereas others have no specifictaste?  Some fruits are sweet and some are source due to presence of certain characteristic compounds that play a vital role in determining the taste of the fruit and each fruit has different proportion of the compounds. The important compounds can alter the taste are proteins, starch, carbohydrates, lactic acid, citric acid, fructose, glucose, and sugar. The fruits may have all the compounds or have some of the compounds but all the fruits have different ratio of the compounds (Arnold & Sanchez, 2004).

The more the fruit tastes sweet, the more amount of fructose the fruit will have. In the similar way, the fruit tastes sour, the more amount of acidic compounds the fruit will have. However, the fruits having no specific taste have mixed quantities of fructose, starch or sugar and acidic compounds (Arnold & Sanchez, 2004). I can be seen that most of the unripe fruits taste sour but as the fruits ripen, they taste sweet due to change in the chemical formation of the of the compounds present in the fruit. 2. How does the ripening of fruit affect the process of seed dispersal?

 The ripening of the fruit and the seed dispersal are much related to each other as seed dispersal is the stage that comes after the ripening of the fruit. Ripening fills most of the fruits with the sweetness (Bajaj, 1995). Animals and humans are dependent on the fruits for their food and seeds are carried with the ripen fruits, as ripen fruits attract more animals and human too. The seeds are carried away by the animals and the humans. On the other hand, the seed becomes ripen as the fruit ripens.

The growth of embryo in the seed is dependent on the ripening of the fruit. A seed from an unripe fruit may not grow into plant or if it becomes plant it will not show the similar results as the ripen seed does. On the other hand, the nutrition present in the fruits fertile the soil and utilized by the seed and the corresponding plant utilize the nutrition for it growth. 3. How do humans interfere in this process by consuming grains and fruits?  Humans have a much influence on the seed dispersal.

The crops we grow in our country may be not the original crop of the country but the country we are living in produces the crop massively. The major example of such a crop is the wheat. Wheat is grown all around the world but some regions adopted the crop while other are produces. Other such examples are pineapple, barley, olives, orange etc (Bajaj, 1995). Thus, human have the largest contribution in the dispersal of seed. Human utilized all kinds of transportation for growing one type of crops in the other regions.

Every day, tons of seeds are transported from one place to the other through ships, trucks, etc. Thus humans have the largest influence on the dispersion of seeds particularly for the grains. 4. Does the seed use the fructose or starch in fruits for its metabolism. Some plants utilize the starch for it metabolism but convert it to sucrose. The sucrose is then broken to activate the metabolism in the seed. The process, in which the seed takes its first step towards growing as plant, is often called as the seed germination (Bewley, Black & Halmer, 2006).

On the other hand, most of the plants including vegetables provide nourishment to the seed in terms of fatty acids. The oil is first converted to sucrose or glucose and then converted to energy. The plant stores a little content of the food taken from the fruit through the membrane of the seed (Bewley, Black, & Halmer, 2006). Rice stores the food for the embryo in the form of starch, while other plants convert the starch and fructose into fats like in caster seeds, citrus fruit seeds, vegetable seeds, etc.

The other major components required for the growth of the seed are air, moisture and temperature. Reference Arnold, Roberto L. Benech & Sanchez , Rodolfo A. (2004). Handbook of Seed Physiology: Applications to Agriculture. New York: The Haworth Press. Bewley, J. Derek, Black, Michael & Halmer, Peter. (2006). The Encyclopedia of Seeds: Science, Technology and Uses. London: CAB. Bajaj, Y. P. S. (1995). Biotechnology In Agriculture And Forestry 30: Somatic Embryogenesis And Synthetic Seed I.

New York: Springer.