Name: Chloroplast
Uploaded: 2019-07-19
Duration: 3 min 5 s
Description: Chloroplast is the ‘chef’ that prepares food from raw materials through photosynthesis! Let's take a look at the cross-section of a leaf and check out these...

Question

Do you agree with Van Helmont? If nutrients absorbed by plants from soil is equal to the mass of plant/tree what will happen? Think and write your hypothesis.

Accepted Answer

Elements mainly derived from soil in inorganic form are known as mineral elements. The three main sources of nutrients for plants are air, water, and soil. The scientist Van Helmont has done his experiment on the relationship of growth of plant with the amount of nutrients present in the soil. It has been assumed that plants obtain the nutrients only from the soil for their growth.

The prevailing theory at the time was that plants grew by eating soil, and Van Helmont devised a clever investigation to test this idea. He weighed a willow tree and weighed dry soil. He planted the tree, watered it and then left it for $5$ years. He then re-weighed the tree, which had increased in mass by over $12$ stone. He dried the soil and weighed it, showing that the soil was almost the same mass. He concluded that the tree grew by drinking water.

I do not agree with Van Helmont’s conclusion after his experiment was after the 5 years the amount of soil weighed the same amount, and the willow tree gained weight by the water that was being added daily.

Plants selectively absorb nutrients from the soil and these nutrients are continuously being regenerated in the soil by microbial action, decomposition, decay, etc. Hence one cannot correlate mass of a plant versus the mass of the soil to estimate how much nutrients is being absorbed. Plants do not convert all the nutrients that were absorbed from the soil into its mass.

Do you agree with Van Helmont? If nutrients absorbed by plants from soil is equal to the mass of plant/tree what will happen? Think and write your hypothesis.

Important Questions on Nutrition in Plants

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