Question

What are the characteristics of tapetum?
a. It does not store food
b. It is multinucleated
c. It is a multi-layered structure
d. It nourishes the megaspore

Answer 1

Hint: Tapetum is the specialized nutritive layer, which is found in the anther of the flowering plants, where is present in between the sporogenous tissue and the anther wall, where this tapetum provides the nutrition to the pollen grains in anther.

Complete answer:
- Tapetum is more important in the nutrition and development of pollen grains.
- Where this tapetum is the future is responsible for the formation of the pollen coat.
- The cells of tapetum are usually bigger, and they have a nucleus, which is more in number.
- In the anther, during the formation of a pollen grain, sporogenous cells undergo mitosis, where along with these cells, the nucleus of tapetum also undergoes division.
- Sometimes, mitosis is not normal, so that many cells undergo the rapid division of the nucleus and they become multinucleate.
- Sometimes in tapetum, polyploid and polyteny are also seen, and the nucleus is abnormal and large size so that it is useful for the nutrition of pollen grains.
- The following things occur in the tapetum during division which includes, endomitosis, nucleus division occur but not cytokinesis, endoreduplication, etc.
- Tapetum helps in the synthesis of pollen wall formation, and it also produces an enzyme called callase.

So from the above explanation, the correct answer is multinucleate.
Hence, the correct answer is option (B).

Note: Tapetal cells are mainly of two types, which includes glandular or secretory and plasmodial. In glandular type of tapetal cells, they remain as cells around the anther locale, while in plasmodial type, they dissolve and fuse with the protoplast.