Q.What are the parts of the fruit ?

A fruit is the ripened ovary; its wall becomes the pericarp, which encloses the seeds.

After fertilization the ovary develops into the fruit and the ovules inside it into the seeds. The fruit therefore has two parts:

• Pericarp, the fruit wall, formed from the ovary wall. In a fleshy fruit it is basically three-layered: the epicarp (outer skin, e.g. the peel of a mango), the mesocarp (the middle, often fleshy and edible layer, the pulp of mango and coconut's fibrous husk) and the endocarp (the innermost layer around the seed, the stony shell of a mango or coconut). In dry fruits such as pea pods the three layers are thin and not clearly separable.
• Seeds, developed from the fertilized ovules, each with a seed coat, an embryo and (in endospermic seeds) the endosperm.

A fruit that develops from the ovary alone is a true fruit; when other floral parts join in it is a false fruit (see the next question). Recognising these parts is what makes the fruit-development section easy to follow: fruit wall from ovary wall, seed from ovule.

Because the state board's syllabus follows the NCERT curriculum here, this answer serves equally for HSC, CBSE and NEET revision.