Question

How does the pollen mother cell develop into a mature pollen grain? Illustrate the stages with labelled diagrams.

Answer 1

Microspore or pollen grain is the first cell of male gametophyte. It is unicellular and haploid.

Young anther consists of a mass of parenchymatous cells surrounded by the epidermis. It then becomes 4 lobed. In each of the four lobes, some of the hypodermal cells begin to act as archesporial initials. Each archesporial initial divide into an outer primary parietal cell and an inner primary sporocyte. The primary parietal cell divides to form 3-5 wall layers. The primary sporogenesis cell divide to produce a mass of sporogenous cells or microsporocyte.

The microspore mother cell divides mitotically form for haploid or pollen grains and remains arranged in the tetrads.