2.2 Transport

• Structures of the plant transport system
• Arrangement of vascular tissues in monocots and dicots
• Uptake of water and mineral salts from roots to leaves
• Transpiration and factors affecting its rate
• Translocation of manufactured food

• relate structures of the plant transport system to their functions
• illustrate the arrangement of vascular tissues in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants
• demonstrate the uptake of water and mineral salts from the roots to the leaves
• demonstrate factors that affect the rate of transpiration in plants
• describe the translocation of manufactured food in plants

“How does water reach the top of a tall tree with no pump?”

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1. Xylem and phloem
   40 min · 2 practice tasks · quiz
   Two transport tissues, moving different things in different directions.
2. Transpiration and translocation
   40 min · 2 practice tasks · quiz
   How water climbs a tree with no pump, and how sugar moves to where it is needed.
3. Why plants need transport tissues
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Diffusion is too slow for a maize plant; specialised tissues solve two different cargo problems.
4. Inside a xylem vessel
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Dead, lignified, open tubes - how each part of a xylem vessel serves the water column.
5. Inside a phloem sieve tube
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Living pipes with a partner cell - sieve plates, companion cells and why phloem cannot be dead.
6. Vascular tissues in the root
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   A central xylem star, phloem between the arms, and an endodermis that checks what enters.
7. Vascular tissues in stem and leaf
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   A ring versus scattered bundles, cambium in between, and veins that reach every mesophyll cell.
8. How roots take up water
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Root hairs, a water-potential gradient, and osmosis from soil into the cortex.
9. How roots take up mineral salts
   40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
   Ions are pumped in against a gradient; that is why waterlogged soil causes deficiency.
10. Apoplast, symplast and the Casparian strip
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Two routes across the cortex, and a waterproof strip that forces a membrane check.
11. Cohesion, tension and root pressure
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    The pull from the leaves does most of the lifting; root pressure and capillarity help at the margins.
12. Using a potometer
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Set up, read a bubble, calculate a rate - and know that you measured uptake, not loss.
13. Investigating factors that change transpiration
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    A fair test of light, wind, humidity and temperature using a potometer, with one factor changed at a time.
14. Other ways to show water movement
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Dye, cobalt chloride paper, weighing a potted plant, and vaseline on leaves - evidence without a potometer.
15. Leaves that save water
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Xerophyte, mesophyte and hydrophyte leaves - adaptations that change the transpiration rate.
16. Mass flow in phloem
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Sucrose loading raises pressure at the source; unloading lowers it at the sink - sap is pushed.
17. Evidence for translocation
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Ringing, aphids and tracers show that food moves in living phloem, not in wood.
18. Transport, crops and water in Kenya
    40 min · 1 practice tasks · quiz
    Transpiration is a water cost; translocation fills grain and fruit - choices on Kenyan farms follow both.