I know this question has been answered many times on the internet but I don’t get one thing – why is water moving to the plant cell a bad thing? The cell won’t burst since it has a wall so wouldn’t it be positive for plants to get more water? With that being said, why is storing starch instead of glucose beneficial then?
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Swelling of cells is caused by osmotic pressure, which is a colligative property – it depends on the *number* of molecules dissolved in the liquid, not the weight. Starch is a polymer of glucose; by stringing many glucose molecules together into a single molecule, it dramatically reduces the osmotic pressure, since the total number of molecules is now much lower. To the extent the starch is insoluble (depends on molecular weight and architecture) this lowers the number of molecules in solution even lower.
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