Question

Why do plants store food reserves in the form of amylum instead of glucose?

Answer 1

Hint: First of all, we need to know about osmolarity. Osmolarity is a process through which we can measure solute concentration. The osmolarity is measured using an osmometer. In Biology if a solution is low in osmolarity that means it has a greater number of water molecules than the number of solute particles. If a solution is with high osmolarity that means it has fewer water molecules than the number of solute particles.

Complete Answer:
The plant stores glucose as amylum or starch to keep the osmolarity of the cell roughly the same. In simple words, among glucose and amylum or starch, glucose is soluble in water and starch or amylum is not. Amylum is a combination of lots of glucose into one molecule. One amylum molecule consists of a $25$ molecule of glucose. This amylum molecule counts as the only \[1\] molecule for osmosis while \[25\] separate glucose molecules would count as \[25\].

The osmolarity can cause some problems. Keeping the osmolarity around the normal value prevents an excess of water entering into the plant cell and it prevents the glucose molecules from getting dissolved in water and travelling apart from the storage location. Because glucose is highly soluble in water. This process allows the cell to store the energy for future use.

Note:
Plants store food so that they can use it in winter seasons. As there is very less sunlight in winter, so plants do less photosynthesis at that time. For example, carrots store food in the roots so that they can survive all the winter. Then in summer a new plant rises from the roots.