Page 88 - General and Inorganic Chemistry for Advanced Secondary Schools Students Book Form Five and Six

Biology for Secondary Schools

Activity 5.4: Investigating the structure Phylum Basidiomycota
of bread mould Members of the phylum Basidiomycota
are called basidiomycetes. They have
Materials: A piece of bread, petri dish structures called basidia (singular
or watch glass, hand lens, forceps, is basidium) that produce sexual
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microscope, microscope slides, pencil, spores. The basidia are usually club-
and notebook shaped structures. Hence, members
of this group are also known as
Procedure club fungi because they all possess
1. Take a slice of bread, put it on a basidia. Their sexual spores are called
petri dish and moisten it. basidiospores. The common examples
2. Leave the bread on the moist of basidiomycetes are mushrooms and
place for 2-3 days until a greyish toadstools, such as Agaricus bisporus
or dark spots appear on it. (edible mushroom). Other examples
3. Observe the changes that might of basidiomycetes include brackets,
have occurred on the surface of puffballs, and rust fungi. They are
the bread well recognisable in various habitats,
(a) Use a hand lens and observe especially in areas with soil rich
the dark spots that have in nutrients. Figure 5.16 shows the
developed on the surface of structure of a mushroom.
the bread.
(b) Take a small sample of dark
spots using forceps and place Cap
it on a microscope slide, add Gills
a drop of water, and cover Ring Stipe
with a coverslip. Underground
(c) Put the sample on the Volva hyphae
microscope stage and observe
using the low, medium, and
high objective lenses.
(d) Based on your observations Figure 5.16: Structure of a mushroom
of the structures on the
bread using the microscope, Characteristics of basidiomycetes
describe the features you (a) They are multicellular organisms.
observed. Compare your (b) They are saprophytic, growing on
observations to the structures decaying organic matter.
shown in Figure 5.15. (c) They reproduce both sexually and

asexually.

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