Food Production Flashcards
How do you increase food yield?
By using fertilisers and pesticides
What are fertilisers?
Added to soil to provide chemicals like nitrates to increase crop yield
What are nitrates used for?
Making proteins
How are nitrates that are dissolved in soil absorbed into plants?
Through their roots
How do animals gain proteins?
By eating plants (or by eating animals that eat plants) to gain amino acids for making proteins
What is protein synthesis?
The process of using amino acids to make proteins
What can fertilises be replaced with?
Genetically modified crops
What does genetically modified mean?
To add a gene from one organism into another organism
What are pesticides?
Chemicals that are sprayed onto crops to kill the pests that feed on the crops
What is DDT?
A pesticide that was used to control the population of mosquitoes in the 1940s
What are biological controls used for?
To introduce natural predators of a pest species as a way to keep their population size low
What are the risks of biological controls?
- Control species might not survive in a new environment
- Control species might become a pest species
- Control species might bring new diseases into the new environment
