Why are chloroplasts compact in plasmolyzed plant cells?
I’m not sure what you mean by “compact”. (Under severe plasmolysis, it is possible that the chloroplasts themselves could shrivel to the point of being smaller, but that is not something that you would likely be looking at unless you are in an advanced botany course at university and you are capable of precisely measuring the size of a chloroplast, probably using an electron microscope). **************************** By “compact”, do you mean packed closely together? After a plant cell has been soaked in a hypertonic salt solution, and you examine it under a microscope, you might notice that the chloroplasts have all clumped into the middle of (or into one area of) each cell because the plant cell membrane pulls away from the plant cell wall and the cytoplasm shrinks or contracts around the chloroplasts. See: http://www.csun.edu/scied/7-microscopy/e… If a plant cell is placed into salt water
