1. How do plant cope with excess light when it is very cold?

Frost and cold are major causes of crop damage to tender plants, although hardy plants can also suffer if new growth is exposed to a hard frost following a period of warm weather. Symptoms will often appear overnight, affecting many types of plants. Leaves and stems may turn black, and buds and flowers may be discoloured, and frosted blooms may not produce fruit. Many annual plants, or plants grown in frost free areas, can suffer from damage when the air temperature drops below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). Tropical plants may begin to experience cold damage when the temperature is 42 to 48 F (5 to 9 C), symptoms include wilting of the top of the stems and/or leaves, and blackening or softening of the plant tissue. In response to extremes of temperature plants can produce various proteins that protect them from the damaging effects of ice formation and falling rates of enzyme catalysis at low temperatures and enzyme denaturation and increased photorespiration at high temperatures. As temperatures fall production of antifreeze proteins and dehydrins rise. As temperatures rise production of heat shock proteins rise. Plants can also adapt their morphology (change their shape) to adapt to longer term temperature changes. For example to protect against frost cell walls can be made thicker and stronger (through more lignification) so that water freezes in between cells (in the apoplast) and not in the cells (in the cytoplasm). Cell membranes are also affected by changes in temperature and can cause the membrane to lose its fluid properties and become a gel in cold conditions or become leaky in hot conditions. This can affect the movement of compounds across the membrane. To prevent these changes plants can change the composition of their membranes. In cold conditions moreunsaturated fatty acids are placed in the membrane and in hot conditions more saturated fatty acids are inserted. Plants adapted to extreme dry and arid climates are known as xerophytic.

2. How do plant cope with soils deficient in phosphorus? Grow cluster roots Proteoid roots, also known as cluster roots, are plant roots that form clusters of closely spaced short lateral rootlets. They may form a two to five centimetre thick mat just beneath the leaf litter. They enhance nutrient uptake, possibly by chemically modifying the soil environment

to improve nutrient solubilisation. As a result, plants with proteoid roots can grow in soil that is very low in nutrients, such as the phosphorus-deficient native soils. Cluster Root Function It was Purnell (1960) who for the first time suggested that proteoid roots were involved in nutrient uptake. All species with proteoid roots can grow in soils with poorly available nutrients, and most do not form mycorrhizal symbioses. Species with cluster roots are also often pioneers in primary and secondary succession, and some are used in land reclamation )Skene, 1998). Proliferation of rootlets in a cluster presents a massive increase in root surface area for contact with soil, which is thought to be advantageous in nutrient uptake. For example, a mature Hakea oblique proteoid root cluster has a surface area (excluding root hairs) 25 times greater than that of an equivalent mass of axial root. Coupled with the proliferation of surface area, proteoid root clusters chemically modify the surrounding soil by exuding compounds. These compounds include carboxylate organic anions, acid phosphatases, phenolics, mucilages, and water, and they facilitate the mobilization of nutrients from soil. Organic anions, especially citrate, mobilize P by chelating soil minerals such as Fe, Al, and Ca, all of which bind P. Acid phosphatases are enzymes that hydrolyze organic forms of P.

The mechanism by which exudation of organic acids occurs is not yet known. It has been shown experimentally that the composition of organic anions within the tissue doesnt reflect that of the exudates and that the rates of exudation do not reflect tissue concentration, indicating that the mechanism has specificity and is not driven solely by a concentration gradients of organic anions between the root tissue and the soil. Interestingly, exudation in cluster roots represents a physiological clustering, akin to the morphological clustering observed in their structure. It occurs as an exudative burst, a remarkable phenomenon wherein the rootlets exude little or no material until fully grown, but then, over 2-3 days, exude large amounts of citrate and malate. Following this, the level of exudation drops back to almost zero (Dinkelaker et al. 1995). This action is supposed to be cyclical, and there are some speculations about the nature of such adaptation: first, it may

prevent soil bacteria from completely metabolizing the exudates before it can enhance nutrient (P) uptake; second, since phosphate has a low diffusion coefficient, a rapid, concentrated event would be more effective than a long-term but lower level of exudation (for review see Skene 1998). It is clear that the exudative burst is a consequence of an alteration in the whole plant metabolism, the details of which remain largely unknown. 3. How do plant cope with excessive salt? Sequester salt in salt bladders Salts in the soil water may inhibit plant growth for two reasons. First, the presence of salt in the soil solution reduces the ability of the plant to take up water, and this leads to reductions in the growth rate. This is referred to as the osmotic or water-deficit effect of salinity. Second, if excessive amounts of salt enter the plant in the transpiration stream there will be injury to cells in the transpiring leaves and this may cause further reductions in growth. This is called the salt-specific or ion-excess effect of salinity (Greenway and Munns, 1980). The definition of salt tolerance is usually the percent biomass production in saline soil relative to plants in non-saline soil, after growth for an extended period of time. For slow-growing, long-lived, or uncultivated species it is often difficult to assess the reduction in biomass production, so percent survival is often used. As salinity is often caused by rising water tables, it can be accompanied by waterlogging. Waterlogging itself inhibits plant growth and also reduces the ability of the roots to exclude salt, thus increasing the uptake rate of salt and its accumulation in shoots. Development of salt bladders is particularly notable on the more salt tolerant members of the family Chenopodiaceae, which includes saltbushes (Atriplex sp.). Salt bladders are modied epidermal hairs, and usually consist of two cells, a stalk cell and a bladder cell. Stalk cells transport ions from mesophyll cells to bladder cells, where NaCl builds up to extremely high concentrations. Bladder cells are covered by a cuticle which is impermeable to both water and salt. As salts are accumulated by bladder cells they expand enormously, and may reach a nal diameter of up to 200 m. Eventually a bladder cell bursts, discharging salt onto leaf surfaces. Accumulation of salt in bladders prevents excessive build up in mesophyll cells. Such protection is particularly important for young leaves. In many Atriplex species, bladder cells

sequester the bulk of salt reaching young leaves, and concentrations in bladder cells can be up to ve times higher than those in mesophyll cells. Taking into account the relative volumes of the bladders versus the rest of the leaf, such bladders hold over 80% of the total leaf Na+ of young leaves. However, as leaves age, the amount of Na+ stored in bladders does not continue to increase, and is eventually matched by levels in mesophyll tissue. 4. How do plant cope manage to grow in deep shade? Use light flecks Light flecks were already mentioned in relation to the vertical structure of forests describing the dynamics of light penetrating though the forest canopy. The importance of such dynamics is illustrade by modeling canopy photosynthesis with steady state and dynamic models, respectively, where the former overestimate carbon carbon gain by 13,4 % at open sites and eveb by 86,5% at low light environments of the understory. Clearly, light flecks must be important in any type of forest. However, in the very dark, moist tropical forests the dynamics of the responses of photosynthesis to light flecks play an essential role in fulfilling the energy demands of photosynthesis in lower canopy layers and particularly on the forests floor. 5. What mechanism enable a barley variety cope better with manganese deficiency with other variety? By root staining using hematoxylin and eriochrome cyanine Nutrient solution culture-based evaluation is more suited for large-scale screening of germplasm for Al resistance. Several hundred seedlings can be evaluated for Al resistance, within a week, in a small space, whereas soil-based assays are more labor-intensive, expensive, and require additional glasshouse space. Under nutrient solution culture, Al resistance has been evaluated using hematoxylin, eriochrome cyanine staining, root growth, and relative root regrowth. Hematoxylin and eriochrome cyanine stain-based methods are based on the ability of Al-resistant seedlings to continue root growth following a short pulse treatment involving a high Al concentration, while the relative root growth (RRG) method uses the root growth and root resistance index to judge Al resistance over a period of time (usually 2-4 days). Root elongation has been suggested to be one of the most important markers when screening genotypes and cultivars for Al toxicity. Since root growth under Al stress is a combination of root vigor (long

roots) and Al resistance, selection of Al resistant genotypes using RRG is preferred as it allows for a better differentiation of genotypes, and it is often used to measure relative level of Al resistance. 6. Why so few plant species in one place? Filters o Some species do not occur in the UK, because they were never introduced o Others arrived, but never made it to maturity o Some evolved locally, or were introduced and made it o Filters are constantly changing/interacting

DAFTAR PUSTAKA Anonymous, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_root. Akses tanggal 1 Februari 2012. Anonymous, 2012. http://www.tau.ac.il/~ecology/virtau/3-philip_nemoy/cluster_roots.htm. Akses tanggal 1 Februari 2012. Anonymous, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpor. Akses tanggal 1 Februari 2012.