Farming practices and productivityAQA A-Level Biology: Flashcards
What these 12 flashcards ask
- What are the two ways of increasing the efficiency of energy transfer in farming?
- What is the purpose of an insecticide in terms of energy?
- How does a herbicide increase crop yield?
- How does a fungicide increase crop yield?
- What is meant by a simplified food web?
- What is a non-human food chain?
- How does restricting the movement of livestock increase production?
- Why is livestock kept in a warm building?
- What does a lower R do to N in N = I − (F + R)?
- Name a biological way to simplify a food web.
- Give one cost of rearing livestock intensively indoors.
- How do you calculate the percentage of ingested energy converted to biomass?
Exam questions on Farming practices and productivity
- A farmer rears broiler chickens for meat. The chickens are kept in warm, closed sheds at a constant temperature, with little space to move around.Explain how the farmer's practices increase the net production of the chickens.2 marks
- A farmer grows wheat. She sprays the crop with a herbicide to kill weeds, an insecticide to kill aphids and a fungicide to kill fungal pathogens.Explain how the fungicide increases the yield of the wheat.2 marks
- Two farmers rear beef cattle. Farmer A lets the cattle roam freely over a large pasture. Farmer B keeps the cattle in a barn at a constant 18 °C with little room to move. Each animal ingests food with a chemical energy store of 240 MJ per week. The animals on farm A store 24 MJ per week in new biomass, and those on farm B store 48 MJ per week.Calculate the percentage of ingested energy that is stored in new biomass on each farm, and state how many times greater it is on farm B than on farm A.3 marks
Written by the Exaim team, led by Shaun Daswani (Head of Upper Secondary, Improve ME Institute; MSc Financial Mathematics, Imperial College London; BSc, UCL) and Jason Daswani (operational lead, Improve ME Institute; LSE).