Exercise 11.1
A flower’s anthers are removed before it matures. Later, pollen from another plant of the same species is dusted onto its stigma and seeds are produced. Which process has been ensured here? (i) Self-pollination (iii) Fertilisation
Not cross-checked
NCERT prints no numerical answer for this exercise, so this working has not been cross-checked against the book.
NCERT’s answer
(iii)
(iii) Fertilisation.
Removing the anthers before they mature means the flower has no pollen of its own, so (i) self-pollination is ruled out.
(iv) tissue culture is ruled out too — that is an asexual method using the shoot tip, with no flower, pollen or stigma involved.
Pollen from another plant of the same species was dusted on the stigma, so cross-pollination was certainly carried out — but pollination on its own does not guarantee seeds.
The decisive fact is that seeds were produced. Seeds form only after the pollen tube grows down the style and the male gamete fuses with the egg cell in the ovule, and the fertilised ovule then becomes the seed.
So the process the outcome ensures is fertilisation.