Food Production

• Crop Yield is the amount of food produced per unit area of land.
• Pesticides and Fertilisers can be used to increase crop yields
• Fertilisers contain nitrates.
• Nitrates in the soil are absorbed by plants and used to make amino acids
• Amino acids are used to form proteins in a plant.
• Amino acids are obtained by plants and animals to begin protein synthesis
• Algal bloom is caused by excess nitrates in the water.
• Hypoxia is a lack of oxygen in the blood.
• Algal bloom also causes a lack of light leading to the death of marine biodiversity
• Dead aquatic plants and dead algae are consumed by bacteria
• Algal bloom ultimately leads to an increase in bacteria population size
• An increase in bacteria cause a decrease of oxygen, leading to hypoxia.
• Genetically Modified Crops are crops that have been genetically modified to have desirable characteristics such as resistance to pests or disease
• Pesticides are chemicals that kill pests and weeds.
• Pesticides can lead to bioaccumulation and bio magnification
• Bioaccumulation is the process by which a substance is taken up by a living organism and stored in its tissues
• Biomagnification is when the concentration of a contaminant increases in a food chain
• 2 alternatives to pesticides are biological controls and GM crops