Nutrition in Plant-Autotrophic

It is a ubiquitous fact that Nutrition is a process to ingest food to ensure the supply of energy for performing different metabolic functions. Nutrition is basically differentiated into two types such as autotrophic and heterotrophic. Both types of nutrition are useful for both animals and plants. This chapter is going to discuss only autotrophic nutrition and analyze its different types and procedures. 

Definition of Autotrophic nutrition 

The procedure to create foods and utilize them to grow, stay healthy, and repair all body parts is the major focus of nutrition. The word autotrophic defines its meaning. The word “auto” means self and the word “trophic” means nourishment. Therefore, the word autotrophic means self-nourishment. Autotrophic nutrition defines the process to make foods from different inorganic raw materials like CO2, H2O, and many more. 

Hence, autotrophic nutrition is a self-nutrition process mostly for the plants to ensure their proper growth and also help them to perform all the metabolic works. In this process, different natural sources like sunlight play a major role. This type of nutrition is mostly applicable to plants only. In this case, plants are called autotrophs. The most important example of autotrophs is photosynthesis. The nutrition of the plants such as blue-green algae and cyanobacteria are the perfect example of autotrophic nutrition.         

Different types of autotrophic nutrition 

Nutrition is basically differentiated into two categories such as autotrophic and heterotrophic. The organisms that ensure their growth with autotrophic nutrition are called autotrophs. On the other hand, all the organisms that ensure their growth with heterotrophic nutrition are considered heterotrophs. The autotrophic nutrition is further differentiated into two sub-categories such as photosynthetic autotrophs, and chemosynthetic autotrophs.    

• Photosynthetic autotrophs are known to use the energy from natural sources like sunlight to convert inorganic particles like water, and carbon dioxide into their food or nutrients. Their foods are specifically called glucose. This glucose is useful for the autotrophs to get the energy for their work and also get the required carbons to ensure their growth. The main by-products in this process are carbohydrates and oxygen.   
• Chemosynthetic autotrophs also use the same kind of procedure like photosynthetic autotrophs. However, the major difference between both of them is the use of energy sources. Chemosynthetic autotrophs do not use natural sources as their energy source like sunlight. These particular autotrophs use the energy coming from different chemical reactions. They commonly use the energy coming from the reaction between hydrogen sulfide and methane with oxygen.  

Photosynthesis      

Photosynthesis is the major important process used by green plants to gain their required nutrition and ensure successful growth. All the green plants, some of the algae, and photosynthetic bacteria use this method to make their foods. In this process, all the organisms use the energy from lights and convert the energy into chemical energy in the form of glucose. The site used in this process is called a chloroplast. Chlorophyll plays a key role in this process as it helps the leaves to absorb light energy from the sunlight. This energy then combines with inorganic materials like water and carbon dioxide and converts it into carbohydrates and oxygen. These carbohydrates are one of the strongest and most influential nutrients for green plants to ensure their successful growth. 

The reason behind the plant uses autotrophic nutrition     

There are basically two types of nutrition processes such as autotrophic and heterotrophic. In the heterotrophic process, all the organisms need to depend on the other nutrition sources for their requirements as they do not have the capacity to make their own nutrition. However, in the case of plants, it is very easy for them to capture energy from different sources and convert it into chemical energy to supply their nutrient requirements. For the green plants, they have the chlorophylls to capture the energy from sunlight and make food out of it. However, there are still some plants available on the earth, which are not considered autotrophs as they do not have the facilities to make their own product and they are dependent on others for their food.  

Conclusion  

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that autotrophic nutrition is the key process to make nutrients for most plants. It is also responsible to ensure the successful growth of the plants. In this chapter different types of autotrophic nutrition processes with proper examples are demonstrated to provide a better understanding of this topic. Moreover, photosynthesis, the major important process for the plants to make their food is critically mentioned in this chapter. In the end, some FAQs on autotrophic nutrition are discussed to provide an in-depth understanding.