Video Transcript
Plants need to take in mineral ions from the soil. What is the main process they use to do this called?
Plants take up essential minerals and water from the soil into their roots. If we have a closer look at a plant’s roots, we can see that roots are long, branching organs that are made up of cells that are specialized to carry out this role. Root hair cells are a type of cell found in the roots that help to anchor the plant in the soil, as well as increasing the surface area of the roots. The increased surface area helps to increase the amount of water and minerals that the plant can take up from the soil.
The root hair cells contain many mitochondria, which provide the cells with energy. Root hair cells require a lot of energy as the transport of mineral ions occurs from the soil, an area of typically low ion concentration, where there aren’t many ions present, to an area of high ion concentration in the root hair cells, where there are already lots of ions. Typically, these ions try to spread out evenly. But as the root hair cells need to take up ions from soil, the cell needs to use the energy released from the mitochondria to move ions actively into the cell. This type of transport is known as active transport.
