Lesson video

Hi everyone, my name is Miss Hummel, and today we're going to learn whether we can clone a potato.

I've got Mr. Potato Head over here, joining me.

Who's going to help us out.

In this lesson we're going to learn about the differences between sexual and asexual reproduction.

Particularly in plants.

We will also learn about the different methods of asexual reproduction in plants, including bulbs, runner plants, and tubers.

Finally, we will write up an experiment which will test whether we can clone a potato.

We will first look at sexual and asexual reproduction and the differences between them.

Then we're going to analyse bulbs, runners, the tubers, and a quick experiment.

And then we'll finally learn about some artificial propagation and what that means.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil or pen, a coloured pencil or pen, and a ruler.

If you haven't got those things, pause the video now and go get them.

Great, we will be completing an experiment in this lesson and if you would like to take part, these are the things that you're going to need.

You're going to need a clear cup, ideally it would be clear, if you don't have one that's okay, but you may not be able to see as much.

You're going to need tooth picks, ideally three or four, although you could use some other things.

For example, I use some chopsticks that I had from some takeaway another night.

And finally you're going to need some potatoes with sprouts.

Now, sprouts are those little green things that may start to grow at the ends of your potatoes.

So usually you would maybe throw them away or cut those off, but now we actually need them for our experiment.

If you would like to do the experiment with me, pause the video now and get those things.

Great, our star words today are sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction and then we've got bulb, runner, and tuber, which all relate to the different parts of our lesson.

And we will go through those words in more detail now.

Organisms reproduce to pass on their genes and create new members of their species.

This is really important to remember, especially when we're looking at different life cycles.

There are two types of reproduction, sexual reproduction, and asexual reproduction.

With sexual reproduction it requires two parents.

You need male sex cells and female sex cells.

For flowers you need to have the stamen, which is the male part of the flower and the pistol, which is the female part of the flower.

However, in asexual reproduction, you only need one parent.

You do not need any sex cells.

It does not involve any sex cells.

We have plants like potatoes, strawberries, and daffodils, which are all examples of plants, which reproduce asexually.

With sexual reproduction, we get offspring, which are like the children, which are genetically different.

They are different to their parents because they have got a bit of the male and a bit of the female.

However, for asexual reproduction, the offspring is genetically identical.

So it's like cloning a version of themselves when they're reproducing asexually.

I would like you to pause the video and complete your task, which is a think task.

Why are plants with flowers considered to take part in sexual reproduction? What is it about these flowers that means that they reproduce sexually and not asexually? Have a think and then resume once you're finished.

For this part of the lesson, we're going to look at bulbs.

Bulbs are considered the underground food storage organs with fleshy leaves that store food and can grow and develop into new plants.

For example, onions and garlic are considered bulb plants.

Let's have a look.

We've got a picture here of onions, garlic and daffodils, which are all considered bulb plants because they have the underground food storage, which will then result into more plants.

Now, the way this works is, if we have a bulb, there would usually be what we call a lateral bulb on the side of it.

Now that lateral bulb will get their nutrients from the main bulb and grow off onto a separate bulb.

Then this bulb can do the same thing and the same thing and the same thing.

And that's how you can grow lots of onions or lots of garlic from just one garlic clove or from just one onion.

Our next type of plant are runners.

Runners refer to the horizontal stems that run on top of the ground and produce new identical plants like strawberries or spider plants.

We can see a picture of one right there.

Now, personally, I have both.

I have a spider plant and a runner plant, and I always check to make sure that they haven't got a new runner that I can plant to create a new version of the same plant.

Here we can see in the diagram an example of how it works.

Now, usually the plant will still have it stems and its leaves and its roots.

However, it will grow almost like a long stem that will go above the ground, which can then plant itself somewhere nearby.

And then that same stem will develop roots, eventually stem and eventually some leaves.

And it will become a new identical plant to the one that it was before.

The next plant we're going to look at is a tuber and it's considered an underground food store.

Groups of cells in the tuber use this food to produce the energy needed for cell division.

These cells then grow and develop into new plants.

The most common tumour we know is a potato.

Let's have a look.

Now, most potatoes can grow eyes, which look just like they do in this picture here.

Now those eyes are the things that we would usually cut off if we were cooking with potatoes, but those eyes are what would help the potatoes grow under the soil, develop new roots and eventually become a new plant.

Some people get confused between bulbs and tubers.

Now a bulb can grow a lateral bud, which will grow into its own bulb in time.

And then those bulbs will develop some roots.

However, tuber is considered a plant that has lots of roots and within those roots, they may create these little fleshy storage points of nutrients like potatoes.

Now those potatoes have enough nutrients that it could grow its own potato plant later on.

And those potatoes will then grow some roots and eventually a stem of its own, forming a whole new plant.

That's how they are different.

Now thinking of our experiment, I thought you might want to see what your potato could end up looking like.

When I did this, the potato ended up growing a stem, which eventually even grew a purple flower and some roots.

The roots grew really dense.

And at that point, if I wanted to keep the potato plant alive, I should have planted it and decided that it could grow into some soil and get enough nutrients.

However, I wanted to see if it could grow a potato, just in a cup.

And after about a month I saw this.

A tiny little potato within all these entangled roots.

And that proved to me, in that moment, that I think it is possible.

I think you can clone a potato just from one other potato.

If you want to do this experiment yourself, let's have a look at the next slide.

For this activity you're going to want to create an investigation by writing the aim, the hypothesis, the equipment, and the method.

I'm going to show you the experiment now so that you can see the answers to these questions.

Hi everyone, so what we're trying to find out is whether we can clone a potato or not.

Going to need a cup, a potato with sprouts, we can see our sprouts right here.

Sometimes we call them eyes.

We're going to need some toothpicks.

Now I didn't have some so I'm going to use some barbecue skewers and we're going to need some water as well.

When we have all of those things, we're going to want to grab our potato.

We're going to decide which side we're going to submerge under the water.

Now, in this case, I want this one, which has got my sprouts and my eyes.

And that's the bit I want to submerge under the water.

I'm going to grab the potato with my toothpick or my skewer and I'm going to pierce the skin about halfway through the potato so that it can stay on the cup without my hands kind of keeping it there.

Going to pierce it, just like you can see.

Then I'm going to grab my other skier and about a third of the way going to pierce another one.

And finally, again, I'm kind of doing it in thirds, I'm going to pierce the other end of the potato so that I can place it on the cup and it doesn't need me to hold it.

Finally, I'm going to grab my water and I'm going to pour it carefully until kind of the bottom, maybe half or third of my potato is submerged.

Definitely, we want that part with the sprouts to be submerged.

Now you're going to create your investigation.

You're going to write the aim, what are you trying to find out? The hypothesis or the prediction, what do you think will happen? The equipment, what will you need? And the method, what are the steps for the experiment? I want you now to pause the video and complete the task above.

If you're still stuck and you might need some help, here are some sentence starters to help you.

Our aim, we could start it by saying, to investigate if a potato can be grown by.

You can explain how we're trying to grow that potato.

For hypothesis, you might want to start it with, I think that the potato will grow because.

Our equipment, you just need a list of the things that we need.

And for a method you may want to use these sentence starters first, take your toothpicks on and.

Then insert the potato into.

Add enough water so that.

And place the jar near.

Now think about where the jar should be.

The jar should be near somewhere where it's going to have enough light so that it can grow.

Great, hopefully you finished writing that up.

I'm sure they're really excellent because you are all excellent scientists.

Finally, we're going to look artificial propagation.

Humans are able to make plants reproduce asexually by artificial propagation.

Propagation refers to the processes needed to grow new plants.

And artificially means that it doesn't happen naturally.

So you are going to artificially propagate.

That means you're going to force a plant to reproduce asexually.

Let's have a look at how humans do that.

There are different ways humans might artificially propagate a plant.

They could take cuttings.

So sometimes they can cut a little stem off and from that stem, they can either plant it in soil or in water and that will grow new roots and will develop into new plant.

They might also try grafting.

Now, grafting occurs when you cut the top part of one plant and the bottom part of another one, and you kind of put them together and hold them together with a clip or with something for a little while and eventually they will merge into one plant.

Humans do this to see if they can grow a new plant.

Now I know I definitely want to try whether I can take some cuttings of some of my plants and do this.

But first I'm going to do some research to find out which plants are best propagated by taking cuttings.

It's the end of our lesson now, which means that you need to complete your quiz.

You need to exit the video and click on the quiz and complete it to test your knowledge and to see how much you remember from the lesson.

Bye, everyone.