Abstract: In angiosperm, the pollen wall is a layer of dense material on the microgametocyte surface, which plays important roles in protecting pollen from various environmental stresses and microorganism attacks, and in cell-cell recognition during pollination. The pollen wall is constituted of the outer layer exine and the inner layer intine. The exine is further divided into sexine and nexine. The material for exine is directly from the tapetum cells, and the deposition pattern of exine is decided by the primexine. Intine is synthesized by microspore itself. Recently, multiple genes were reported to be involved in the pollen wall formation in Arabidopsis theliana. The mutations of the majority of these genes lead to male sterility in plants. The functions of these genes are related to tapetal development, sporopollenin biosynthesis and transport, callose wall and primexine formation. The functions of these genes in the pollen wall development are introduced in this paper.

Key words: plant sexual reproduction, male sterility, pollen wall, tapetum, primexine