Ch 11Enhancement of Food Production — Class 12 Biology, concept-first.

This chapter brings together every biological route by which food production is raised - breeding better crop plants and farm animals, growing plants from a few cells, rearing bees, fish, silkworms an…

Food is one of the most basic biological needs of any organism — it is the organic, energy-rich, non-poisonous, edible material that, once swallowed, digested and assimilated, keeps the body alive, ac…

Plant breeding is the deliberate, purposeful manipulation of the heredity of crop plants, aimed at producing new varieties that are genuinely superior to the varieties already in cultivation.

A. Hybridization and its technique : Hybridization is described as the single most productive method available for crop improvement, because it is the only reliable way to combine the desirable charac…

B. Mutation Breeding : Mutation is a sudden, heritable change in an organism's genotype. It can arise naturally, or it can be deliberately induced in a breeding programme by exposing seeds or seedling…

Plant tissue culture is not a single technique but a whole collection of related techniques, which together have grown into an important branch of plant biotechnology.

The world's need for animal protein is on a scale that conventional livestock farming alone struggles to meet sustainably: it has been estimated that by 2050 the world would need to produce around 1,2…

Biofortification is the practice of breeding crop varieties specifically to contain higher levels of vitamins, minerals and fats — in other words, deliberately raising a crop's nutritive value, not ju…

Animal husbandry is the agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock, and the chapter is careful to describe it as being every bit as much a science as it is a skill or an art practised by…

A. Animal breeding : Breeding of animals is a central pillar of animal husbandry, aimed both at increasing the overall yield obtained from an animal and at improving the desirable qualities of whateve…

B. Dairy farm management : The dairy industry covers three linked activities: the production of milk on the farm, its processing, and its distribution to consumers, and it centres on milk, a valuable…

C. Poultry farm management : Poultry covers a number of domesticated bird species — chicken, ducks, turkeys and fowl — kept specifically for their eggs and meat, and the industry built around them ext…

D. Apiculture or bee keeping : Apiculture, or bee-keeping, is the artificial rearing of honeybees, undertaken for two linked reasons: to obtain bee products — honey, wax, pollen, bee venom, propolis (…

E. Fishery : Fishery is the branch of applied biology dealing with the catching, processing, farming and marketing of fish and other economically useful aquatic animals, including prawns, lobsters, oy…

F. Sericulture : Sericulture is the branch of applied zoology dealing with the rearing of silkworms and the production of silk from them.

G. Lac culture : Lac culture concerns Trachardia (also called Kerria) lacca, a small, colonial insect whose dermal glands, in the female, secrete a resin-like, pink-coloured substance.

Biotechnology, in the broad sense used here, is the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents, in order to provide goods and services for…

Beyond the microbes used directly in food preparation, an enormous range of commercially important products — alcoholic beverages, organic acids, vitamins, growth hormones, enzymes and antibiotics — a…

Sewage is the general term for waste matter carried off through drainage systems — a municipal waste stream that includes human excreta, household waste, dissolved organic matter, and a genuinely wide…

Many developing countries actively encourage the installation of biogas plants as a way of meeting their energy needs.

Biocontrol, or biological control, refers to the use of biological methods — rather than synthetic chemicals — to control plant diseases and pests.

Fertilizers are the nutrients required for plant growth, and by extension for the productivity of any cultivated crop; using them effectively is one of the central pillars of the Green Revolution's su…

Q.1 of the textbook exercise (p270): nine multiple-choice questions.

Q.2 of the textbook exercise (p270): nine very-short-answer questions.

Q.3 of the textbook exercise (pp270-271): eight short-answer questions.

Q.4 of the textbook exercise (p271): six long-answer questions.

The textbook's end-of-chapter Project (p271): one four-part information-collection task on sericulture. A guided approach is given.

Sample papers and previous-year board questions for this subject.