Question

Standing crop is
A. All photosynthetic living forms of an area
B. All crop plants in an area
C. Dried biomass of all living organisms in the given environment.
D. None of the above.

Answer 1

Hint: Standing crop is measured to calculate the productivity of an ecosystem. Productivity is the rate by which biomass is produced. Wet biomass is not considered while measuring standing crops because of the addition of any possible moisture present in the environment and hence might result in the inappropriate data collection.

Complete answer:
-Standing crop is the amount of living biomass that is present in an ecosystem during a specific period.
Standing crop is an abiotic component. It is also referred to as the amount of above-ground plant biomass.The standing crop also indicates how productive an ecosystem is. Also, it is present all over the ecosystem.
-Biomass is a term used to describe the weight of the plant material present on the land in a specific period. Biomass is measured to overwatch the ecological and management procedures in the vegetation. Biomass can be measured of a specific species or the whole vegetation that is present in the region at that time.
-Standing crop tells us the total above-ground plant biomass present in an area at a particular time. The current year’s production and the previous year’s production is also taken into account when talking about standing crops.
-Fluctuations in the measurements can be observed in the standing crop, depending upon the seasonal changes and the utilization of crop (grazing) by animals in that area.
-The standing crop also tells the abundance of organisms that exists in an area at a particular time frame.
-It can be expressed as the biomass of organisms, the number of individuals, energy content, etc.
-It is always expressed in terms of dry mass as wet mass might retain moisture and give inaccurate measures.

Hence, the correct answer is option (C).

Note: The concept of productivity includes three main concepts i.e. Standing crop, materials removed and the production rate.
-Standing crop helps in measuring out the biomass of the organisms present in that ecosystem at that time frame.
-Materials removed involve the removal of the materials from that area per unit time. The materials removed might be organisms which are migrated to some other place or the yield to man or the material that we take as an organic deposit.
-Production rate is the amount of material made by each step in the food chain per unit time per unit area. It tells about the growth rate of the area of that ecosystem.
-Standing crop is one of the measures to calculate the productivity of an ecosystem.
-It can help to tell us the concentration of the individuals present in various populations in an ecosystem.