Question

What Is The Function Of Pollen Grains?

Answer 1

Hint: Pollen is a powdery substance that consists of pollen grains which are basically male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes or sperm cells. Pollen grains have a hard coat that is made up of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants.

Complete answer:
Pollen itself is not the male gamete. Each pollen grain contains vegetative which is the non-reproductive cells and a generative or a reproductive cell. In flowering plants, the vegetative tube cell produces the pollen tube, and the generative cell divides to form two sperm nuclei.

If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or a female cone, it germinates, thereby producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule that contains the female gametophyte. Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in the process of cross-pollination. Whereas, in the case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower. Pollen is infrequently used as food and also as a food supplement. Because of agricultural practices, it is contaminated by agricultural pesticides.

Their main function is in the transferring of the male gametes to their female counterparts which are the ovules in the embryo sac thereby facilitating sexual reproduction to occur in the plant.

Note: The study of pollen is called palynology. Pollen is formed in the microsporangia of the male cone of a conifer or other gymnosperm or in the anthers of an angiosperm flower. Pollen grains occur in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and surface markings characteristic of the species. Note that except in the case of some submerged aquatic plants, the mature pollen grain has a double wall.