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Backgrounds and Graphics by Torin and Bakari Olivetti

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How Do Plants Affect People?

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•Plants affect baboons also!

•Plants affect baboons also!

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• Beverages**• Medicines• Flavorings• Fragrances• Dyes• Poisons**• Decorations

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• _______ Species of Flowering Plants• ________ are Edible• Only ~ ___ Major Food Crops…

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• …was the critical step in the development of __________?…

• What type of crops were most important???? __________?

• Wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, manioc, sweet potatoes provide ____?

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Secondary Xylem

• Build your house..

• Heat your house…

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• Using Plants to Clean, Fix, Environmental Problems.

• Example: Metal Accumulating Plants clean contaminated soil.

• Zinc, cadmium, lead, mercury, etc

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Examples of Genetic Engineering

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Adding a New Trait is as Simple as Inserting a New Gene

• Caveats???????

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How People Have Used Plants Through Time?

1. Eat plants that you find..

2. Cultivate…

3. Selection of phenotypes…

4. Breeding… crosses for traits…

5. Genetic Engineering… designer plants…

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Botany 4 Lecture #38

The Impact of

Humans on Plants

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How Have Humans Changed Plants?

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Changing Plants**

• Increase oil content or sweetness or decrease fat or add a gene or pest resistance or phenotype or reduce variability or increase variability, selectively, introduce invasive plants, promote evolution, retard evolution.

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Both Good and Bad..+ or - ?

• Deforestation, Fragmentation, Habitat Destruction

• Artificial Selection

• Hybridization / Crosses / Genetic Engineering

• Cultivation / Propagation / Agriculture

• Extinction / Prevention of Extinction

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Rosy Periwinkle

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• Rapid deforestation destroys biodiversity — and many species' promise for the human race.

• Off the southeast coast of Africa lies the massive island of Madagascar. The ancient forests of the island's central plateau are home to the rosy periwinkle, a plant that stands only a foot tall at maturity. Its tiny flowers and shiny, green leaves distinguish it no more than its height, yet the rosy periwinkle has become famous throughout the world, particularly in medical circles. In the 1950s, scientists isolated chemicals produced in the plant that are extremely effective in fighting childhood leukemia and Hodgkin's disease. The rosy periwinkle contains over 70 alkaloids with medical applications such as lowering blood sugar levels, slowing bleeding, and tranquilizing.

• Although stable wild populations of rosy periwinkles still grow in Madagascar, mass deforestation due to poor agricultural practices is rapidly depleting the island's native dry tropical forest habitat and threatening its unique plant and animal species. Slash-and-burn farming has been standard practice for many years as a means of converting forest areas to crop fields. Some scientists estimate that at the current rate of destruction, almost all of Madagascar's forests could be lost within 25 years. As recently as ten years ago, precious topsoil run off, perhaps as great as one hundred tons an acre each year, could be seen from space, a distinctive red in the surrounding ocean. Conservationists are searching for ways to help Madagascar's people better sustain their island's treasures. Ecotourism and sustainable farming offer some hope but neither alleviates Madagascar's most pressing problem of a rapidly multiplying population.

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Habitat Fragmentation

• Produces Many Small Populations…

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Effects of Agriculture on Plants?

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Why Does a Species Become Extinct?

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Avoiding Extinction: “Living Fossils”

• Cycads and Ginkgo…..

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This semester we

• Looked at all levels of Plant Biology from atoms to ecosystems….

• Looked at Plant biology through many disciplines from biochemistry to anatomy to physiology to genetics to ecology, etc.

• Made many observations and asked many questions…

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• Consider all that you do all day. Is there anything you do all day that can’t be connected to plants?

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In my very first botany class in 1970

• Dr. Oostenink asked a question.

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Have you Have you Thanked a Thanked a

Green Plant Green Plant Today?Today?

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And now for a little fun…