Plant biochemistry involves the study of the biochemistry of autotrophic organisms such as photosynthesis and other biochemical processes specific to plants. Plant Biochemistry presents each topic from the cellular level to the ecological and environmental levels, placing it in the context of the whole plant. Biochemical pathways are represented as route maps, showing how one reaction follows another. These maps emphasize the dynamism and flexibility of the plant facing the environmental challenges. The unique and wide–ranging approach of this book emphasizes the importance of teaching and learning pathways within the framework of what the pathway does and why it is needed. Plant Biochemistry illustrates the impact of plants on human activity and success, in terms of their importance as a food supply and as raw materials for industrial and pharmaceutical products, and considers that humans can benefit from exploiting plant biochemical pathways. So, Plant Biochemistry is the science which studies chemical and physico–chemical processes that take place in the living organisms having the role to establish the material substrate of the life’s phenomena. Usually the development of the organisms is possible due to the biochemical processes that take place in them in different environmental conditions. The influence exerted by the environment is reflected in the morphological and chemical structure of the organisms
Plant biochemistry is related to the animal and human activity where there are similar, however in all plants each cell has achieved a much more complicated metabolic process comparing to the animal organisms which are specialized on different functions. Animal, plant and environment form an inseparable unit, and only this way, in a comparing and general way, biochemistry shows a material world and the different shapes that it can take. So, when studying biochemistry there have to be treated at the same time both the fundamental chemistry of animals and that one of chemical plants and their need. Biochemistry has a particular role in the acquisition of agricultural raw materials for finished products with good yields, quality, and economic conditions in high yield. Biochemistry is involved in obtaining such materials in the conduct of technological processes, to conserve packaging and finished products, waste recovery in manufacturing, etc. During their industrial transformation raw materials and agricultural products suffer biochemical processes necessary or harmful, caused by enzymes, processes that must be traced, suppressed or directed
Any living organism is an energetic system. The amount of energy received from the environment is equal to the consumed energy, plus the accumulations. If the accumulations are positive the organism will gain weight, and if the accumulations are negative it will lose weight. In a healthy organism it is desired that the accumulation should be maintained constant in time. The totality of the energetic exchanges that take place permanently between the living body and the environment, meaning that the organism is spending (losing) energy replaced by the energy contained in food is called energetic expenses.
The energy from the nutrients is the potential chemical energy and it is contained in the C–H, C–O, and the C–N links from proteins, lipids and carbohydrates, these links being able to split in the conditions of the high temperatures, the pH and the chemical environment created by cellular activities. After the usual oxidative splitting of the nutrients, the organism stocks the potential chemical