Question

How do plants get nutrients?

Answer 1

Hint: Plants require nitrogen and various other essential minerals and nutrients. Nitrogen is present in large quantities in the environment. But plants cannot directly uptake nitrogen from the air.

Complete answer:
To solve the question, we must first know about the plant's nutrients and how plants get these. Plants essentially require nitrogen which they cannot absorb from the air directly. They follow a certain process of nitrogen fixation which helps to take nitrogen in soluble forms which can be further utilized in the plant body. The process of conversion of ammonia present in the soil, to nitrite and from nitrite to nitrate is called nitrification. Ammonia is converted to nitrite with the help of bacteria Nitrosomonas. This nitrite is converted to nitrates by Nitrobacter bacteria. The conversion of nitrate back to nitrogen gas using soil microorganism is known as denitrification.
Apart from nitrogen, plants also have some micronutrients like Zinc, chlorine, manganese and copper and macronutrients like phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulphur and calcium. These nutrients are absorbed from the soil.
Plants have root hair through which they absorb the minerals and nutrients from the soil as ions. The absorption of these minerals and nutrients depends entirely on their concentrations in the surrounding medium as well as inside the root hair. At times even energy is required for the active absorption of these minerals to take place.

Note:
Some leguminous plants also have certain bacteria (eg. Rhizobium) in their root nodules which help in the biological nitrogen fixation.