The Purpose and Benefits of Plants

Plants are living organisms that have been around since the beginning of time. They range in size from microscopic algae to hundred meter tall redwood trees. New plants are always being discovered and so far there are about 350,000 plant species, which include trees, herbs, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and algae.

Picture a plant in your head. Do you think of plants with leaves, stems, and roots? They are made of cellulose and get energy through photosynthesis. The world has all sorts of plants. The two main types are spore plants and seed plants. Spore plants include algae, mosses, and ferns. Seed plants are trees, flowers, and herbs. Together they are classified as the Kingdom of Plantae.

Every plant is different and each fills a niche in the environment. Plants can be annual, biennial, or perennial. Some grow big and tall and others are slim and flexible or short and thorny. A plant's growth depends on the climate. The climate determines temperature, water, light, and nutrients. Growth can be hindered by competition for space, soil composition, fungi, insects, pests, diseases, and animals. Fortunately, plants adapt because they are one of our planet's most influential organisms.

The environment depends on plants to prevent soil erosion, to assist in the nitrogen cycle, and to be part of the water cycle. Plants are a main source of food, but even more importantly plants produce oxygen. It is vital that plants thrive so that humans can survive. This is why plant conservation is so important.

Besides providing humans with oxygen, plants provide foods, building materials, medicines, fuels, and aesthetic features that enhance our lives. Plants supply humans with wood for building, clothing, renewable fuels, coals, petroleum, herbal supplements, pesticides, drugs, poisons, chemicals, and medicines. Where would we be without those things?

Did you know that there are over 20,000 edible plants? But only about 20 species provide 90% of our food!

Plants help us relax, beautify our homes, provide shade and privacy, block noise, and prevent erosion. People camp in forests, visit botanical gardens, and grow their own food and gardens.

Plants play a role in every home, garden, backyard, culture, and life all over the world.

There are many jobs that are based on plants. The study of plants is called botany. The cultivation of plants is called agriculture and includes agronomy, horticulture, and forestry. Think of all the professions that revolve around plants - farmers, gardeners, groundskeeper jobs, landscapers, horticultural therapist, nursery workers, marine biologist, botanist, agronomist, plant breeders, fruit growers, florists, and arborists.

Everyone is involved with plants. They are impossible to avoid. Next time you see a tree, flower, or moss think about what an impact it has on your lifestyle.

Wheat

Wheat has been cultivated and used for human food for many thousands of years. People have used wheat to make bread throughout recorded history. It is believed that wheat was first cultivated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Wheat is an annual grass in the genus Triticum that comprises a large number of wild as well as cultivated species. It is an annual plant up to 1.2 m in height. The stems are hollow inside except at the nodes. The leaves grow from the nodes. Wheat flowers are gathered in spikes. Each spike consists of a main axis on which the spikelets are distributed laterally. The wheat flowers are not very showy. They do not have petals or sepals.

Fairly dry and mild climates are the most favourable for growing wheat. In general, wheat needs lots of sunshine, 30.5-38 centimeters of water, and temperatures of 21 to 24ºC. Winter wheat is planted in autumn and harvested in summer. It needs a period of cold weather with short days and long nights to flower. When the temperature drops below freezing wheat becomes dormant. Spring wheat is planted in spring and becomes fully ripe in summer. Extreme heat or cold and very wet or very dry conditions will destroy both winter wheat and spring wheat.

Wheat is by far the world’s largest and most widely cultivated food crop: one-seventh of all farmland around the world is used for growing it. Every moment of the year, somewhere a farmer is harvesting this grain as another is planting it.

Soils Overview

Soils are complex mixtures of minerals, water, air, organic matter, and countless organisms that are the decaying remains of once-living things. It forms at the surface of land – it is the “skin of the earth.” Soil is capable of supporting plant life and is vital to life on earth.

Soil performs many critical functions in almost any ecosystem (whether a farm, forest, prairie, marsh, or suburban watershed). There are seven general roles that soils play:

1. Soils serve as media for growth of all kinds of plants.

2. Soils modify the atmosphere by emitting and absorbing gases (carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and the like) and dust.

3. Soils provide habitat for animals that live in the soil (such as groundhogs and mice) to organisms (such as bacteria and fungi), that account for most of the living things on Earth.

4. Soils absorb, hold, release, alter, and purify most of the water in terrestrial systems.

5. Soils process recycled nutrients, including carbon, so that living things can use them over and over again.

6. Soils serve as engineering media for construction of foundations, roadbeds, dams and buildings, and preserve or destroy artifacts of human endeavors.

7. Soils act as a living filter to clean water before it moves into an aquifer.

Soil Formation

Soils differ from one part of the world to another, even from one part of a backyard to another. They differ because of where and how they formed. Five major factors interact to create different types of soils:

Climate - Temperature and moisture influence the speed of chemical reactions, which in turn help control how fast rocks weather and dead organisms decompose. Soils develop faster in warm, moist climates and slowest in cold or arid ones.

Organisms - Plants root, animals burrow, and bacteria eat – these and other organisms speed up the breakdown of large soil particles into smaller ones. For instance, roots produce carbon dioxide that mixes with water and forms an acid that wears away rock.

Relief (landscape) - The shape of the land and the direction it faces make a difference in how much sunlight the soils gets and how much water it keeps. Deeper soils form at the bottom of a hill because gravity and water move soil particles down the slope.

Parent material - Every soil “inherits” traits from the parent material from which it formed. For example, soils that form from limestone are rich in calcium and soils that form from materials at the bottom of lakes are high in clay. Every soil formed from parent material deposited at the Earth’s surface. The material could have been bedrock that weathered in place or smaller materials carried by flooding rivers, moving glaciers, or blowing winds. Parent material is changed through biological, chemical and environmental processes, such as weathering and erosion.

Time - All of these factors work together over time. Older soils differ from younger soils because they have had longer to develop. As soil ages, it starts to look different from its parent material. That is because soil is dynamic. Its components - minerals, water, air, organic matter, and organisms - constantly change.

Components are added and lost. Some move from place to place within the soil. And some components are totally changed, or transformed.

Food Technologies

Food Sources

Food is any substance, usually comprised primarily of carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, water and/or proteins, that can be eaten or drunk by animals (including humans) for nutrition and/or pleasure. The main food sources are plants and animals.

Many plants or plant parts are eaten as food. There are around two thousand plant species that are cultivated for food. Plant-based foods can be classified as follows: seeds, fruits and vegetables.

Seeds are packed with energy and are good sources of food for animals, including humans. In fact, the majority of all foods consumed by human beings are seeds. These include cereals (such as maize, wheat, and rice), legumes (such as beans, peas, and lentils), and nuts.

Fruits make up a significant part of the diets of most cultures. Some fruits, such as pumpkin and eggplant, are eaten as vegetables.

Vegetables are other plant matter which is eaten as food. These include root vegetables, leaf vegetables, stem vegetables, and inflorescence vegetables. Many herbs and spices are highly-flavourful vegetables.

When animal tissue is eaten as food, this is known as meat. Many different kinds of animals are eaten, but mammals make up the majority of meat.

The most common mammal-based meats include beef, lamb, pork, and mutton. Poultry is meat from a bird; the most common poultries are chicken and turkey. Seafood is meat from a fish or other sea creature, such as shellfish or lobster.

Often animal products are eaten as well. Mammals produce milk, which in many cultures is drunk or processed into dairy products such as cheese or butter. Birds and other animals lay eggs, which are often eaten. Many cultures eat honey, produced by bees, and some cultures eat animal blood.

Food Composition

Food is everything we eat. It provides the energy and nutrients needed to support all body functions, maintain good health and carry out everyday activities. Food contains many ingredients, called nutrients, which help the body function well. Foods are complex mixtures of different components, providing varying amounts of the nutrients the body needs. Most nutrients cannot be produced by the body and must be taken in adequate amounts from the food we eat in order to be healthy and prevent disease. No single food contains all the nutrients needed by the body in the right amounts; one food may be rich in one or two nutrients, but low in other essential nutrients. It is only by eating adequate amounts of a variety of foods that we can help ensure that we will take in the right amounts of the nutrients needed for good health and nutritional status.

The nutrients in foods are grouped by their similar characteristics and the functions that they carry out in the body. Certain nutrients are called “macro” nutrients because the body needs them in fairly large amounts in order to function properly; these are carbohydrates, protein and fats. Other nutrients, also necessary for body functions, are called “micro” nutrients because the body needs them in very small amounts; these are vitamins and minerals. A nutrient can perform one or several functions in the body.

The three macronutrients – carbohydrates, protein and fats – are the major source of energy and bulk (volume) in our diets. They are the only nutrients that contain energy from food, which is measured in calories. Energy in our food is necessary for activity, growth and other body functions such as thinking, digesting and metabolizing food (all reactions of the body to use food), breathing, and circulating blood and oxygen. Getting sufficient energy is essential for everyone in order to maintain body growth and development and good health. Energy is so important to survival that we have developed the ability to store it for future use in the form of fat if we take in more than we need at the moment. Carbohydrates, protein and fats, in addition to providing energy, each have very specific functions in the body and must be supplied in sufficient amounts to carry out those functions.

Cattle Products

Cattle are kept to convert grass, grain and other crops into protein-rich foods for man.

Beef is the flesh of the ox; the average annual consumption in the UK is just over 28kg per person. The texture and fat content of beef varies according to the part of the animal from which it was cut. The different parts have different names. In addition the animal provides liver, heart, kidney, ox-tail and tongue. The hides of slaughtered cattle are the main source of leather.

Milk consumption in the UK is over 0.4 litres per person a day and is an important part of the diet, providing protein, sugar, fats, minerals and vitamins.

One litre of milk makes 40 g of butter (this varies according to breed of cow, age and feeding). In practice, butter is made from cream that has been separated from the milk. The remaining milk (skim milk) is reduced to powder for use in the food industry or for inclusion in animal feeding stuff.

Cheese is made from whole milk. One litre of milk makes about 100 g of cheese, leaving whey, a liquid by-product, which is fed to pigs or used in the manufacture of margarine.

Meals in Ukraine

We, Ukrainians, like to eat a lot of good tasty food cooked of fresh products.

Fruit and vegetables, grown under the hot sun in rich Ukrainian soil often without any chemical fertilizers, have natural taste of real nature products. Traditionally they are saved without chemical processing. Cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry are often fed with natural products (maize, wheat, vegetables and, of course, grass). So meat has natural taste which differs according to the animal’s food.

Since old time Ukrainian national cooking is famous for great variety of tasty and useful dishes. They are good for health because combine almost everything the human body needs to be healthy. For example, the most popular soup, called borsch, has up to 20 components. A big plate of good borsch gives the person almost all elements and enough energy for a half of a working day or so. So many Ukrainians prefer to eat borsch before hard work.

Ukrainian traditional foods and drinks are very interesting from the medical point of view. Doctors say that a person, who keeps old Ukrainian traditions in meals, gets everything he needs for health and fruitful mental and physical work.

English Meals

The usual English meals are breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; or in some families breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. The English are very particular about their meals and strictly keep to their meal times.

The traditional English breakfast is a substantial meal. As a rule it begins with porridge (oatmeal boiled in water or milk). It can also be corn-flakes with milk instead of the porridge. Then comes ham and eggs or eggs and bacon, marmalade (usually made of oranges) with buttered toast, and tea or coffee. But many English people have neither time nor money to enjoy this traditional English breakfast every day. They have it only on Sundays or when they are on holidays. And very often they have just a cup of tea and a slice of bread or toast.

Lunch time is about one o’clock. It is a simple meal - fish, steak and chips, or cold meat, boiled or fried potatoes.

Dinner is a principle meal in England. Those who take an “early” dinner (at noon), have supper in the evening. So supper is a cold meal. It consists of all kinds of sausages, cold meat, tinned fish, cheese, mixed pickles and some bread and butter.

At five o’clock Englishmen have tea. But it is not a substantial meal, it is simply tea when they chat over a cup of tea with one’s friends or family.

Livestock Breeding

Feeding Beef Cattle

Unlike humans, beef cattle have a ruminant digestive system. Their stomachs are made up of four parts. Ruminant microorganisms in the first three parts enable cattle to digest fibrous feeds that humans cannot. This microbial breakdown produces essential nutrients such as amino acids and B vitamins. The presence of these nutrients makes beef very useful for human consumption.

Cattle require protein, energy, water, fat, minerals, and vitamins. The amounts vary according to environment, the cow's age, time of year, and production goals. Availability of feedstuffs also varies by location and season. Up to 75 percent of the cost of raising an animal goes to feed.

Protein and carbohydrate levels be adequate for growth and maintenance normally are found in high quality legume hay, such as alfalfa and clover. Poor quality feeds, such as cereal straw, grass straw, or rain damaged hay, require protein or energy supplements. You can purchase supplements from your feed supplier.

Beef cattle normally do not need vitamin A, B, or E supplementation. They can get these vitamins from normal quality feedstuffs. However, a vitamin A deficiency can result from feeding dry, bleached out hay. Symptoms of vitamin A deficiency include watery eyes, rough hair coat, night blindness, and poor gains.

Vitamin D is formed by the action of sunlight on animal tissues. If you confine your cattle to a barn or stall for extended periods of time, vitamin D deficiency may become a problem.

Minerals are inorganic compounds that contribute to bones, teeth, protein, and lipid functions of the body. Minerals are provided through natural feeds and supplementation.

There are three main categories of mineral supplements:

• Salt, which usually is sold as iodized salt and does not contain other minerals

• Trace mineralized salt, which consists of a large percentage of salt and traces of some or all of the following: copper, iron, iodine, cobalt, manganese, selenium, and zinc

• Mineral mixes, which usually contain major minerals such as calcium and phosphorus as well as trace minerals and some salt.

You can provide supplements as licks or mix them into feed. The composition of needed salt or mineral supplements varies depending on your locale and feedstuffs. Clean water is essential and must be provided at all times. Under normal conditions, cattle consume 4 to 20 gallons of water per day depending on size, age, and weather. Heat dramatically increases water consumption.

Pigs

Pigs or hogs are part of the order Artidactyla (even toed, hoofed animals) and the family Suidae. The five genera and nine species live on every continent except Antarctica.

The body of a hog is fat and strong. They have short, bristly hair on their bodies called bristles. Hogs have a nose called a snout which helps them find food by smell. They have an excellent sense of smell because they have poor eyesight. They have curly tails and squeal if they are hurt. They are smart animals. Adult pigs have 44 teeth. Boars have a long front tooth on each side that is called a tusk. The tusks stick up outside their mouth. Farmers often cut off the tusks. This animal doesn't have sweat glands so it likes to roll around in mud to keep cool. The mud also protects a pig from insect bites and from sunburn. Because they roll in mud, pigs often look mucky and people think that they are dirty animals. But pigs are clean animals! They will have a place which they use as a toilet which is well away from the places where they eat or drink.

Hogs are omnivorous. However, unlike other domestic animals the pig has a small stomach and requires its food in concentrated form. Pigs grow more rapidly than any other class of farm animals in relation to their weight. The daily ration of a pig should be composed of feeds with a definite proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals.

When a hog is about 8 months old, it can start to have babies. The sow (female hog) is pregnant for about four months before giving birth. Usually a sow will have about 8 to 12 pigs at a time but they might have 27 or more. The sow gives birth in a pen. The pen has a curved rail that makes her lay down so that she won't crush her babies.

Chickens

Chickens come in many sizes and colours. They lay eggs which can range in colour from pure white, to dark brown, to olive green, to speckled. The number of eggs an adult female lays in a year varies from none to 365, or one a day. The typical country chicken which has had no breed improvement usually will lay between 25 and 100 eggs per year, depending mostly on conditions such as feed, exposure to disease and predators, weather, and others. Layers usually start producing eggs between six and eight months of age, depending upon their health and the time of the year. The improved breeds start laying at five to six months of age, and under good conditions will lay between 180 and 365 eggs yearly, with an average flock of 100 birds producing 240 to 280 eggs per layer. There are also improved breeds which are intended specifically for meat production. Chickens from such breeds can weigh over 2 kg at only seven to eight weeks of age.

Chickens hatch from fertilized eggs after 21 days of incubation. In poultry production, incubation can either be by natural means (a broody hen) or by artificial means (an incubator). Before hatching, chicks absorb the yolk of their egg into their lower body in the yolk sac. This yolk supplies them with enough food and water for up to two days, at which time they must begin drinking and eating on their own. Chicks hatch by breaking through an air cell in the large end of the shell. Using their upper beaks, chicks peck a hole through the shell, then continue to peck at it until the shell is weakened enough so that it can be entirely broken open. This process is called pipping.

At hatching, chicks are wet. Within a few hours they dry out and are covered with a soft down. The first feathers appear within a week on the wing tips and tail; other feathers grow in later.

Chickens mature at different rates, depending on breed, nutrition and environmental factors. Most will be mature by six months of age. Males are called cockerels until they reach maturity, when they are called roosters or cocks. Before reaching maturity, female chickens are called pullets, once they begin laying, they are called hens. Some farmers will refer to a whole flock of female chickens as pullets until the entire flock reaches full egg production.

Fish

Many animals that live in water are called fish. Perch, crayfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish, starfish, and even whales and dolphins all live in water. Yet, of these animals, only the perch is a true fish. Whales and dolphins are warm-blooded mammals. The others belong to the great group of animals without backbones, called invertebrates.

A fish is a cold-blooded animal that has a backbone and lives in water and breathes by means of gills. It normally has two pairs of fins in place of arms and legs, as well as several other fins. Many fish are covered with scales.

Fish are found from the sunny surface of the ocean down to the darkest depths where light never penetrates. Some can live in hot desert pools at temperatures of more than 100° F (38° C) that would kill most animals. Others spend their entire lives in the dark pools and streams of underground caves. More than 20,000 living kinds of fish are known, and new species are discovered every year. This is more than all the other kinds of backboned animals combined. Another 20,000 fossil fish are known.

Many fish feed on fish smaller than themselves and are in turn the food of larger fish. Basically, however, all fish depend on the rich “pastures of the sea” known as plankton. A little more than half of the plankton consists of diatoms. The rest is made up of microscopic organisms - one-celled protozoans; eggs and larvae of fish and shellfish; tiny shrimplike creatures, the copepods, and countless others. Plankton drifts with the currents, flowing like a thick, rich soup.

Fish swim chiefly by sideways muscular movements of the body and sweeps of the tail. The fins are used for balancing, steering, and braking.

Fish are harvested for their highly nutritious meat and for the oil that is extracted and used as a food product or as an ingredient for a wide variety of commercially prepared products. There are numerous freshwater and saltwater fish species that are harvested throughout the world.

ГРАМАТИЧНИЙ ДОВІДНИК

Unit 1

1.1 Порядок слів / Word Order

Для англійської мови характерний сталий порядок слів. Порядок слів, при якому на першому місці стоїть підмет, на другому – присудок, а після нього прямий додаток, є типовим для англійського розповідного речення. Цей порядок називається прямим порядком слів у реченні.

Якщо в реченні є непрямий додаток, то він ставиться після присудка перед прямим додатком.

e.g. I’ll give you my address.

Прийменниковий додаток звичайно ставиться після прямого додатка, а якщо його нема – після присудка.

e.g. He wrote to his mother every weekend.

Обставини звичайно стоять після додатків, а якщо їх нема – після присудка.

e.g. I phoned Tom immediately.

Обставини часу і місця можуть стояти на початку речення.

e.g. Last week I went to Kyiv.

Якщо присудок або його частина стоїть перед підметом, порядок слів називається зворотнім або інверсією. Інверсія буває повною і частковою. При повній інверсії весь присудок стоїть перед підметом.

При частковій інверсії лише частина присудка стоїть перед підметом. Інверсія вживається в питальних реченнях.

Повна інверсія вживається в реченнях з there.

Повна інверсія вживається, коли речення починається словами here, there, now, then.

e.g.Here comes Ann.

Повна інверсія вживається, коли речення починається словами up, down, off, out.

e.g. Up climbed the boy.

1.2 Типи запитань / Types of questions

За характером запитання і потрібної на нього відповіді в англійській мові розрізняють чотири типи питальних речень: загальні запитання (general questions), спеціальні запитання (special questions), альтернативні запитання (alternative questions) та розділові запитання (disjunctive questions).

1) Загальними називають запитання, на які можна відповісти словами yes або no. Загальні запитання починаються з допоміжного або модального дієслова, після якого стоїть підмет, а потім основне дієслово

e.g. Do you go to school? – Yes, I do.

Can you play chess? – No, I can’t.

2) Запитання до окремих членів речення називаються спеціальними. Вони починаються питальними словами who, what, where, how many та ін.

Серед спеціальних запитань розрізняють:

- запитання до різних членів речення, крім підмета та його означення;

- запитання до підмета та його означення.

У запитаннях до різних членів речення після питального слова порядок слів такий самий, як у загальних питаннях: допоміжне дієслово або модальне дієслово, підмет, основне дієслово, потім усі інші члени речення.

e.g. Where do you live?

What is your name?

У спеціальних запитаннях, що відносяться до підмета та його означення, порядок слів такий же, як у розповідному реченні – інверсії немає, допоміжне дієслово не вживається. Якщо питальне слово є підметом, то після нього, як і в розповідному реченні, стоїть присудок.

e.g. Who goes to the cinema?

3) Альтернативні запитання – це запитання вибору. Вони складаються з двох частин, з’єднаних сполучником or. Альтернативні запитання можуть мати структури як загальних, так і спеціальних запитань.

e.g. Is he a doctor or an engineer?

Where does he live: in Sumy or in Kyiv?

4) Розділове питання складається з двох частин. Перша частина – розповідне речення в стверджувальній або заперечній формі, друге – коротке загальне запитання, що складається з підмета, вираженого особовим займенником, який відповідає підмету першої частини, та допоміжного або модального дієслова. Якщо перша частина розділового запитання має стверджувальну форму, то в другій частині вживається заперечна форма, і навпаки.

e.g. You are a food technologist, aren’t you?

His friend studies at the university, doesn’t he?

Unit 2

2.1 Іменник/Noun

2.1.1 Множина іменників / The plural of nouns

2.1.2 Присвійний відмінок іменників / The Possesive Case of the Nouns

В англійській мові є два відмінки: загальний (the Common Case) і присвійний (the Possessive Case).

Присвійний відмінок відповідає на питання whose? (чий? чия? чиє? чиї?).

Присвійний відмінок однини утворюється додаванням до іменника апострофа і закінчення –s:

Якщо іменник в однині закінчується на –s, –ss, -x,то на письмі в присвійному відмінку додається здебільшого тільки апостроф:

Якщо іменник в множині закінчується на -s, то в присвійному відмінку множини до нього додається лише апостроф, якщо іменник в множині не закінчується на -s, то його присвійний відмінок утворюється так само, як і в однині, тобто додаванням –s:

У присвійному відмінку вживаються в основному іменники, що означають назви істот, назви країн, міст, планет, збірні іменники типу government, family, party …

2.2 Pronouns (personal and possessive)/Особові та присвійні займенники

Unit 3

3. Теперішній неозначений (простий) час /

• ⇐ Назад
• 63
• 64
• 65
• 66
• 67
• 68
• 69
• 70
• 71
• 72
• 73
• 747576
• 77
• 78
• Далее ⇒