The part which we eat in Mango is :

Question

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Correct — B, Mesocarp. The mango, Mangifera indica, is botanically a drupe, or stone fruit, and the part we eat is the middle layer of its fruit wall. After fertilisation the ovary wall of the flower ripens into the pericarp, and in a fleshy fruit that pericarp differentiates into three concentric layers: the epicarp on the outside, the mesocarp in the middle and the endocarp innermost. Cut a mango lengthwise and all three are visible at once — the thin skin you peel off is epicarp, the thick yellow, juicy, sweet flesh is mesocarp, and the flat woody stone in the centre is endocarp. It is the mesocarp that is eaten, ripe as fruit and pulp or unripe as pickle, chutney and amchur. Two structural details make the identification certain rather than merely plausible. First, the defining characteristic of a drupe is that its hard, woody, lignified stone is derived from the ovary wall itself, so the stone is fruit tissue and not a seed coat — what north Indian kitchens call the guthli is endocarp plus the seed inside it, and in mango that woody endocarp is only about 1–2 mm thick around a single seed 4–7 cm long. Second, a drupe is indehiscent and normally develops from a single carpel, which is why there is exactly one stone and one seed rather than many seeds loose in pulp as in a berry. The same three-layer architecture runs through every drupe — coffee, olive, jujube or ber, date, pistachio, cashew, and the whole genus Prunus from almond and apricot to peach, plum and cherry — and all that changes from fruit to fruit is which layer turns fleshy. In the mango that layer is the mesocarp, and it is the reason the tree is grown at all. Mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and the Philippines; the mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The epicarp is the mango's thin outer skin — green, ripening through yellow to red or crimson depending on cultivar — and it is peeled off and thrown away, not eaten. It is not inert either: contact with the oils in mango skin, sap and leaves is a well-known cause of plant dermatitis, and people already sensitised to urushiol from poison ivy or poison oak can cross-react, because mango belongs to the same family, Anacardiaceae, as cashew and pistachio.  (c) The endocarp is the hard, fibrous, woody stone at the centre — in mango a lignified shell roughly 1–2 mm thick wrapped round a single seed 4–7 cm long. Being stony is the definition of the endocarp in a drupe, so it can never be the edible layer of one. Candidates pick it when they confuse the fruit with the citrus group, where the juicy edible pulp really does come from endocarp tissue in the form of juice vesicles.  (d) This option is only right for fruits whose edible part is not pericarp at all — the flesh of an apple or pear, which is thalamus; the translucent white flesh of a litchi, which is an aril; the white kernel of a coconut, which is endosperm; or the cashew 'apple', which is a swollen flower stalk. The mango is not one of those exceptions. Its edible flesh is straightforwardly the middle layer of the fruit wall, so a named layer fits and the catch-all fails.

Concept: A fruit, in botany, is nothing more than a ripened ovary, and a seed is a ripened ovule. Once fertilisation is over, the ovary wall thickens into the pericarp, which is the entire fruit wall, and in fleshy fruits that pericarp separates into three layers — epicarp, mesocarp and endocarp, outermost to innermost. Which of the three becomes juicy is what distinguishes one fleshy fruit type from another, and this is the whole content of a large class of exam questions. In a drupe such as mango, coconut or ber, the mesocarp is fleshy or fibrous and the endocarp is stony, with one seed inside. In a berry such as tomato, grape, brinjal or banana, the mesocarp and endocarp are both soft and the seeds lie free in the pulp. In a hesperidium — orange, lemon, mosambi — the edible juice sacs are outgrowths of the endocarp, and the peel is epicarp plus the oil-glanded mesocarp. In a pome such as apple or pear the ovary itself is small and the flesh comes from the thalamus, which makes the pome a false fruit. Beyond the pericarp entirely lie the special cases: an aril, an outgrowth around the seed, is what is eaten in litchi; endosperm, the seed's own food store, is what is eaten in coconut; and in cashew the fleshy 'apple' is a swollen peduncle carrying the true fruit, a nut, on its tip.

State PCS 2025 Q148 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q148 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer