Question

what is anaerobic respiration? why do farmers flood the fields with growing rice?

Answer 1

Anaerobic means the absence of oxygen . Anaerobic respiration means where the cells do not breath oxygen release from the fuel to power their life functioms. Molecular oxygen is the most electro negative molecule in the biological systems so it can accept the electrons efficiently however some other oxidizers so that they evolve in such a way to do their life functions with out oxygen. Though in case of anaerobic respiration the organism produce less number of ATP as compare to aerobic respiration from electron transport chain. Many bacteria and archaea perfrom use anaerobic respiration. Other organisms perfrom their respiration depending upon the presence of oxygen .

One of the good reason of flooding the rice field is to avoid the weeds , the water layer supress the weeds. Rice is a semi aquatic plant. This unique property of soil make the difference between rice and other crops . High flooding can retain the nutrients of the soil and the field can recieve the free biological nitrogen so that no need to use the nitrogen fertilizer or little use of nitrogen fertilizer. Also flooding makes the ploughing of the rice field easier.