Answer:

Ans.57,000 Let plants in prev. year be x Plants this year=109% of x=62130 Thus, 109x/100=62130

explanation is in the picture

To solve this problem, we can use the following steps:

1. Let the number of plants in the previous year be x.

2. The number of plants now is 1.09x, since the number of plants increased by 9%.

3. We are given that the number of plants now is 62,130.

4. Therefore, we can set up the following equation:

1.09x = 62,130

5. To solve for x, we can divide both sides of the equation by 1.09.

x = 62,130 / 1.09

6. x = 56,700

Therefore, the number of plants in the previous year was 56,700.

**Explanation:**

The 9% increase in the number of plants is a multiplicative increase, which means that we multiply the number of plants in the previous year by 1.09 to get the number of plants now. We can also think of this as a proportion:

new number of plants / old number of plants = 1.09

We are given that the new number of plants is 62,130, so we can solve for the old number of plants by dividing the new number of plants by 1.09.