NABARD Current Affairs Quiz: 8 October 2026

The correct answer is Rowriah, Jorhat, Assam. The Central Silk Board’s Silkworm Seed Production Centre there received a newly constructed grainage building and cold storage facility, inaugurated by the Union Minister of State for Textiles under the North-East Region Textile Promotion Scheme. Option B names another locality near the same town and is the kind of near-miss that catches a candidate who remembers only the district. Options C and D name places long associated with silk research and seed work elsewhere in the country, which is precisely why they are planted here; neither features in this inauguration. The facility can produce 30 lakh disease-free layings of mulberry hybrid seed a year and preserve up to 1 crore of them, so quality seed should reach the region’s farmers on time.

The correct answer is Rs 9.68 crore. The National Biodiversity Authority received that amount from users of India biological resources in the half year from 1 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, as amended in 2023, read with the Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations. Of this total, Rs 9.56 crore was paid specifically for access to biological resources by firms across sectors, with the small remainder coming from applications relating to intellectual property rights and other heads. Options A, C and D are deliberately close to the real figure, since questions on this release are most likely to turn on the exact amount rather than on a round number. A good way to fix it in memory is to pair the headline figure of Rs 9.68 crore with the access component of Rs 9.56 crore and with the leading sector, agri-seed, at Rs 7.16 crore.

The correct answer is Bastar in Chhattisgarh, where the Ministry of Cooperation is holding its 9th National Review Workshop on 8 and 9 October 2026. The Secretary of the Ministry told the inaugural session that the suggestion to hold a workshop on cooperative development in Bastar, a district long affected by Left Wing Extremism, had come from Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah, which is precisely what makes the venue worth remembering rather than incidental. Option A, Raipur, is the State capital and the obvious guess for anyone who recalls only the State. Option C, Bhubaneswar, belongs to Odisha, which does appear in the workshop discussions, since one thematic session covered Left Wing Extremism-affected districts of both Chhattisgarh and Odisha, but it is not the venue. Option D, New Delhi, is where many such reviews are usually held, which is why holding this one in Bastar was itself the point.

The correct answer is about 84 per cent, which works out to 73 metric tonnes of Muga silk. The trap here is option C: 74 per cent is Assam’s share of Eri silk production, amounting to 2,131 metric tonnes, and the two shares are routinely swapped in question papers, so the pairing must be learnt together. Options A and B are invented figures. Muga is the golden silk for which Assam is known, and the minister pointed to Mission Senehjori as a way of turning it into a high-value product for global markets. For completeness, the State recorded 6 per cent of mulberry raw silk output, or 9 metric tonnes, in 2026-27 up to July, and the whole North-Eastern Region recorded 142 metric tonnes of mulberry silk in the same period.

The correct answer is agriculture and seeds. The agri-seed sector accounted for the largest share of the receipts at Rs 7.16 crore, well ahead of every other category. Option A, food and beverages, came second with Rs 1.59 crore. Option B, animal husbandry, was third at Rs 62.01 lakh. Option D, cosmetics, was among the smallest heads, at Rs 0.04 crore, alongside Red Sanders wood at Rs 0.06 crore and AYUSH at Rs 0.21 crore. That ordering is the most likely thing to be asked, because it shows which industries actually draw on the country biological wealth in commercial quantities. It also fits the list of resources behind the payments, which is dominated by crops such as chickpea, red lentil, green moong, horse gram, guar gum, okra and brinjal, alongside medicinal plants and soil micro-organisms.

The correct answer is NCEL, NCOL and BBSSL, that is National Cooperative Exports Limited, National Cooperative Organics Limited and Bharatiya Beej Sahakari Samiti Limited. The workshop gave special attention to building stronger value chains in exports, organic products and seeds through these three national cooperative institutions, and to empowering primary cooperative institutions through them. The mapping is easy to hold if each name is tied to its field, with exports going to the first, organics to the second and seeds to the third. Option C mixes two financing bodies with a fertiliser cooperative: NABARD took part in the workshop through its team and the National Cooperative Development Corporation had a dedicated session, but both deal with finance rather than these value chains. Options A and D name well-known cooperative and marketing organisations that were not the three bodies cited for this purpose.

The correct answer is about 29.50 lakh persons. The minister cited this estimate to show how much livelihood depends on the sector, which is the reason seed quality and modern infrastructure matter well beyond the rearing shed. Options A, B and D alter the leading digit of the real figure and are the standard distractors for an employment number. The context is worth remembering with it: the Central Silk Board’s seed network covers both the mulberry and the Vanya sectors, with its national silkworm seed organisation serving the mulberry side and two separate organisations supporting Vanya seed. The minister argued that quality silkworm seed, modern infrastructure, technology and skill development together decide whether sericulture stays productive, and he linked the effort to an Aatmanirbhar North-East.

The correct answer is the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, as amended in 2023. The receipts of the National Biodiversity Authority come in under that Act read with the Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations, which require users of Indian biological resources to share benefits with the country and with the communities that conserve those resources. Options A, B and D name important environmental laws, but none of them governs benefit sharing from the commercial use of biological resources: the first deals broadly with environmental protection, the second with the protection of wild species and protected areas, and the third with the diversion of forest land. The money collected under the correct Act is routed through State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils, and funds People Biodiversity Registers, Biodiversity Management Committees, research and direct benefits to local communities and other benefit claimers.

The correct answer is financial assistance to institutions that are not cooperatives themselves but promote cooperative development. The Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation explained that the recent amendment to the National Cooperative Development Corporation Act has paved the way for extending assistance to such bodies, which opens a direct route for various State-level institutions to draw funds from the Corporation, and he urged States to make effective use of the opening. Option A is wrong because the Corporation works through institutions rather than lending to individual farmers. Option C describes nothing in the amendment; the workshop instead discussed a model cooperative banking framework and better supervision of cooperative banks while keeping their autonomy. Option D is also incorrect, since the Ministry is coordinating with the Reserve Bank of India to strengthen the resource-raising capacity of cooperative banks, not transferring the Corporation to it.

The correct answer is M/s Synergia Life Science Ltd, whose payment of Rs 1.17 crore was the single largest one received in the period. The distinction worth holding on to is between the largest overall contributor and the largest single payment. Option A, M/s East West Seeds India Ltd, was the biggest contributor in total, paying roughly Rs 2.01 crore, but it did so across several instalments rather than in one payment. Option C, M/s Tata Chemicals Pvt Ltd, paid Rs 52.06 lakh, placing it among the significant contributors along with M/s Indena India at Rs 45.89 lakh, M/s Grow Indigo at Rs 45.79 lakh, M/s Novozymes South Asia at Rs 44.11 lakh and M/s Nongwoo Seed India at Rs 40.53 lakh. Option D, M/s Nunhems India Ltd, made upfront payments of about Rs 1.64 crore. Contributors also included entities from Sri Lanka, Germany, France, the Republic of Korea and Bhutan.

The correct answer is the Open Network for Digital Commerce. The Ministry of Cooperation is examining a proposal for a common cooperative digital platform to market cooperative products and farm produce more effectively, and the Secretary informed participants that the Open Network for Digital Commerce had offered its support for the initiative. The Ministry intends to seek suggestions and guidance from the States before taking the design further, so that the mechanism actually connects cooperative institutions with wider markets. Option B, Government e Marketplace, is the public procurement platform through which government buyers purchase goods and services, a different purpose altogether. Option C, the National Payments Corporation of India, builds and runs retail payment systems. Option D, the Unique Identification Authority of India, issues Aadhaar. Only the first is an open digital commerce network of the kind a cooperative marketing platform would be built on.