Question

1. What is the direction of water movement if the water potential of a plant cell is higher than a solution surrounding it? What happens to the solutes inside a cell when the water potential inside the cell increases?

Answer 1

In general, you will observe water movement from high water potential to low water potential, since the water potential of the plant cell is higher as compared to the surrounding environment (solution), so water movement would be from plant cell to surrounding solution.

If solutes get accumulated inside the cells then they will decrease the solute potential of the cell which will further decrease the water potential (total) inside the cell and in this case you will observe a reverse scenario which was observed earlier, that means movement of water from the surrounding solution to inside the plant cell. For the water potential is widely expressed by Ψ (psi).