Where plants make food
Chloroplasts catch light and make sugar.
Making your own food
Animals get food from their surroundings. Plants make their own food, using sunlight.
Where in a plant cell do you think this happens?
What this lesson covers
The idea
Plants make and store food in plastids; a chloroplast is a double-membrane plastid whose semi-fluid stroma holds disc-shaped membrane structures with chlorophyll that absorb light for photosynthesis, and stores the sugars and starch made.
Making your own food
Animals get food from their surroundings. Plants make their own food, using sunlight.
Where in a plant cell do you think this happens?
- In special organelles called plastids
- In the nucleus
- In the cell wall
Shine light on a chloroplast
Add sunlight. Then find each part.
Plastids and the chloroplast
Plants make and store food in plastids. A chloroplast is a double-membrane plastid. Its semi-fluid stroma holds disc-shaped membrane structures containing chlorophyll, which absorb light for photosynthesis. The sugars made are stored in the stroma, along with starch granules.
Chlorophyll is the green pigment. It gives leaves their colour.
- Part | Job
- Double membrane | surrounds the chloroplast
- Discs with chlorophyll | absorb light energy
- Stroma | stores sugars and starch
Notes
Chloroplasts are double-membrane plastids. Their disc-shaped structures with chlorophyll absorb light for photosynthesis; sugars and starch are stored in the stroma.
Check yourself
Which pigment absorbs sunlight in a chloroplast?
Where are the sugars made in photosynthesis stored in the chloroplast?
A chloroplast is…
Why do plants need plastids but animals do not?
- Chlorophyll — correct. Yes.
- Cellulose. Cellulose is the wall material.
- ATP. ATP is the energy currency.
- In the stroma — correct. Yes, along with starch granules.
- In the nucleus. Not there.
- On the cell wall. Not there.
- a double-membrane-bound plastid — correct. Yes.
- a single-membrane sac of enzymes. That is a lysosome.
- a stack of flattened sacs. That is the Golgi apparatus.
- Plants make their own food using sunlight; animals get food from their surroundings — correct. Yes.
- Animals have no cells. Animals are made of cells.
- Plants do not need energy. They do; plastids help them make and store food.