BOTANY Lecture Course for Higher Education Applicants for the Degree of «Bachelor» in «Agronomy» - 2016

LECTURE 1. Botany as a science of plant structure and life activity. The cell as the fundamental structural and functional unit of living matter

The Cosmic Role of green plants. Plants as a source of raw Materials and food supply for society. Botany and the future. Plants and animals: their common features and differences. Branches of botany. The Relationship of botany with other disciplines and branches of agricultural production. Cell diversity. The relationship between Cell Structure and shape and their performed function. Cell structure. Protoplast: its biological properties, composition, and significance.

Botany is the science of plants that studies their external and internal structure, life activities and development, geographic distribution, dependence on habitat conditions, floristic and coenotic relationships, Classification, origin, evolution, and more.

Knowledge of plants is essential for agronomists, animal engineers, and veterinary medicine specialists. Today, it is a multi-disciplinary science whose common objective is the comprehensive study not only of individual plants, but also of natural plant communities that form forests, meadows, steppes, etc. At the same time, as a fundamental science, botany addresses practical needs: how most appropriately to utilize useful plants or specific areas of plant cover. Along with animals and other groups of organisms, plants constitute the world of living beings, exhibiting a mutual unity manifested in the uniformity of their Cells, similarities in growth, development, reproduction, chemical composition, METABOLISM, and other basic life manifestations.

Life on the planet originated about 3.8 billion years ago in an oxygen-free environment. The primordial atmosphere consisted of nitrogen, hydrogen, Water vapor, methane, phosphorus, and others. Oxygen was present in the atmosphere solely in the form of oxides (primarily hydrogen).

Stages of formation of living organisms:

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The plant kingdom numbers about 500,000 species. They are distributed everywhere: on land from the equator to arctic regions, in fresh and saline water bodies, and in the ice of the Arctic and Antarctic.

Due to chlorophyll contained in Chloroplasts, The conversion of radiant solar energy into organic matter takes place, thereby achieving the primary synthesis of organic matter:

Other substances (Proteins, fats, CARBOHYDRATES, and their derivatives) are synthesized from these, which are utilized by heterotrophic organisms and incorporated into the cycle of matter. Therefore, plants are called phototrophs because they harness the energy of sunlight.

Annually, about 83 billion tons of organic matter are synthesized, and 174 billion tons of carbon are assimilated in The process of Photosynthesis. Plants serve as a source of energy accumulation in the form of coal, oil, and gas.

Through The activity of green plants, the Earth's atmosphere became enriched with oxygen. Soil formation resulting from rock weathering enhanced the energy of life processes and led to The Emergence of oxygen-based Respiration.

Heterotrophic organisms (Saprophytes, parasites) decompose PLANT AND ANIMAL organic residues, converting these remains into Inorganic Compounds.

Plant cover influences climate formation and modification, soil-forming processes, and fertility enhancement.

Plants in human life:

Out of 500,000 plant species, humans utilize about 25,000 predominantly flowering species, with 1,500 species in cultivation alongside a vast number of varieties.

They satisfy humanity's primary needs for food, clothing, and shelter. The most important groups include: cereal or grain crops (rice, wheat), vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers), melons and gourds (watermelons, melons, pumpkins), fruit crops (apples, pears, bananas, pineapples, plums, cherries), oilseed crops (sunflower, rapeseed, olive), medicinal plants (oregano, eucalyptus, sage), essential oil plants (rose, mint, lavender, catnip, poppy, beggarticks), rubber-producing plants (guayule, kok-saghyz), honey plants (phacelia, skullcap), tannin-bearing plants (oak), forage crops (oats, sudan grass, sorghum, corn), industrial crops (for oil, sugar, textiles), fiber crops (cotton, flax, hemp, kenaf, ramie, jute mallow), dye plants (woad, southern blue indigo), etc. Humans use wood to obtain building materials, paper, cardboard, artificial silk, turpentine, acetone, camphor, charcoal, Essential Oils, and more.

Branches of botany

Morphology studies external forms and internal structures. It is subdivided into Cytology, Histology, anatomy, histochemistry, and Embryology.

Physiology studies life processes inherent to plants (metabolism, growth, development, etc.); plant biochemistry and plant biophysics have branched off from it.

Plant systematics involves the description of all existing species, classification into taxonomic groups, and the Determination of the evolutionary Pathways of the plant world.

Paleobotany reconstructs the course of the evolutionary Development of the plant kingdom.

Phytocoenology - plant communities characterized by a specific structure and stability.

Ecology - interrelationships between PLANTS AND THEIR environment, and the IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL factors on plant structure and vital activity.

Plant geography - spatial Distribution of plant species and phytocoenoses across the Earth's surface in relation to climate, soils, and geological history.

History of Botany

The term "botany" originates from the Greek word "botane", meaning grass or plants.

Stage 1 - The accumulation of intuitive knowledge about plants. Early humans familiarizing themselves with useful plants.

Stage 2 - The era of utilitarian knowledge about plants. The beginnings of artificial cultivation of useful plants (VI–V millennium BC). During this period, knowledge regarding the beneficial properties of plants accumulated, and its synthesis laid the groundwork for the emergence of botany.

First written records date back to the III–IV centuries BC. Aristotle and Theophrastus made the first attempt at plant classification, dividing plants into trees, shrubs, subshrubs, and herbs, and herbs into perennials, biennials, and annuals. The practical need to identify useful plants gave rise to plant morphology.

Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) in his Natural History provided data on 1,000 plants with useful properties, categorizing them into medicinal, ornamental, food, technical, and other groups. This work remained a standard reference for botanists until the late 17th century.

Stage 3 - The period of descriptive botanical knowledge. XV–XVIII centuries – an era of initial plant inventorying, during which the core concepts of plant morphology were formed, principles and Methods of Plant classification were developed, and the first artificial systems of the plant world were created. Andrea Cesalpino (XVII century) based plant systematics on fruit structure.

Stage 4 - The period of analytical botanical knowledge. Robert Hooke improved the microscope and introduced the term "cell". Marcello Malpighi and Nehemiah Grew laid the foundations of plant anatomy. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) represents the pinnacle of artificial systematics; he refined plant description techniques, introduced the term "species" as the fundamental unit of systematics, and established binomial nomenclature (where the first word designates the genus and the second the species). In 1833, Robert Brown described the Cell Nucleus. Jan Purkinje and Hugo von Mohl described the Cytoplasm. V.I. Belyaev described the mechanisms of Mitosis and Meiosis in plants. I.M. Gorozhankin discovered plasmodesmata between cells and observed simple Fertilization in gymnosperms.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and C.F. Wolff proposed that plant vegetative Organs underwent metamorphosis during evolution – a milestone for plant morphology.

Augustin Pyramus de Candolle substantiated the Anatomical and morphological similarities of plants based on their Functions, structural blueprints, and origins – establishing The concepts of homologous and analogous organs. S.G. Nawaschin discovered Double fertilization in plants in 1898. V.V. Dokuchaev (1846–1903) developed The Theory of geographical zones.

Stage 5 - The era of systemic botanical knowledge. Eugenius Warming contributed to ecological geography and life forms. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) studied the Geographical Distribution of plants and their dependence on climatic, geomorphological, and other factors – establishing plant geography. Geobotany – The Study of vegetation cover and phytocoenoses (August Grisebach 1814–1879, V.N. Sukachev, J.K. Paczoski, Heinrich Gams).

Development of Botany in Ukraine

W.G. Besser – studied the flora of the Right-Bank Ukraine and published Flora Galiciae;

F.K. Bieberstein – studied the flora of Crimea and the Caucasus;

V.M. Cherniaiev – authored Conspectus of Plants Wild-Growing and Cultivated in the Environs of Kharkiv and in Ukraine, describing 1,759 species, including 1,127 cultivated and 17 new ones;

J.K. Paczoski – authored Flora of Polissia and Adjacent Territories, describing 1,291 species;

I.F. Schmalhausen – authored Flora of Southwestern Russia, i.e., the Provinces of Kyiv, Volhynia, Podolia, Poltava, Chernihiv, and Adjacent Localities, describing 2,074 plant species.

Synanthropic flora has been studied by H.O. Kuznetsova, V.V. Protopopova, and V.A. Solomakha.

V.I. Vernadsky – pioneered THE CONCEPT OF the biosphere; M.G. Kholodny – developed the theory of phytohormones and studied auxin biology; V.M. Liubimenko – investigated The Nature of chlorophylls and their relationship with carotenoids; M.M. Hryshko – advanced genetics and breeding of hemp and ornamental plants.

Oleksandr Yanata – born in Mykolaiv in 1888, was an organizer of the Kholodny Institute of Botany, the Ukrainian Botanical Society, and the Ukrainian Nomenclature Commission, as well as the journals Ukrainian Botanical Journal and Agronomic Journal; he strongly advocated for the preservation of the Askania-Nova nature reserve, the Ukrainian Steppe Nature Reserve, Kamyani Mohyly, and the Fomin Botanical Garden in Kyiv. He was repressed on charges of "bourgeois nationalism in the fight against weeds" and died in Siberian exile in 1938. He was buried in a mass grave and rehabilitated in 1964.

Botany and the Future

Conducting botanical research on Earth and in space to ensure food supplies within closed ecological systems.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW high-yielding varieties and hybrids. Transgenic crops.

Formulation of measures to preserve the integrity of our planet's plant cover.

Plants and animals share several common features while also exhibiting distinct differences:

The Cell was discovered by the English microscopist Robert Hooke, who introduced the term "cell" to describe cell walls and, subsequently, the cell contents. The term "cytoplasm" appeared in 1862.

The Dutch scientist Leeuwenhoek discovered chloroplasts, Brown discovered The Nucleus in 1833, and E. Russow and I.M. Gorozhankin discovered pores in The Cell wall and described plasmodesmatal strands in 1879. I.D. Chistyakov described nuclear division in 1874. S.G. Navashin (1989) is considered the founder of the theory of the nucleus.

By the end of the 19th century, cytology had established itself as an independent science. The basic Components of the cell were studied using the Light Microscope. The invention of the Electron microscope led to the discovery of new structures and the description of important details of previously known Organelles.

The cell is the fundamental structural unit of most plants (unicellular, colonial, and multicellular). It is a morphologically and physiologically differentiated, biologically active unit bounded by a semipermeable membrane and capable of self-renewal, self-regulation, and self-reproduction within a non-living environment.

The plant cell consists of four main structural components: the cell wall, protoplast, vacuole, and inclusions.

Dimensions: ranging from ultra-small — 0.2 µm — to several centimeters (flax bast fibers up to 2–3 cm, stinging nettle up to 8 cm, ramie up to 20–22 cm).

Cell shape: parenchymatous (length = width), found in meristematic, ground, and mechanical Tissues;

prosenchymatous (length > width) — bast fibers, collenchyma cells, sieve tubes.

The protoplast is the living Contents of the cell, consisting of the cytoplasm and its organelles; it is the metabolically active component of a living cell. The protoplast includes the cytoplasm (a colorless biological colloid) housing various structural components (Plastids, Mitochondria, ER, Golgi apparatus, Lysosomes, Microbodies, spherosomes, Ribosomes, microtubules, and microfilaments) known as organelles.