NDA GK Questions 2026

Sphagnum is a bog moss, a bryophyte, whose dead cells hold many times their own weight of water; in waterlogged and acidic bogs its remains decay only partly and pile up as peat, which is cut, dried and burnt as fuel and is also used in nurseries to keep soil…

An angiosperm shows double fertilisation: of the two male gametes brought by the pollen tube, one fuses with the egg to give a diploid zygote, and the other fuses with the two polar nuclei of the central cell.

The word itself means naked seed: the ovules are not enclosed in an ovary, so after fertilisation the seeds lie exposed on the surface of the scales of a cone and no fruit is formed.

It is the only surviving species of its order, has remained almost unchanged for many millions of years and is known from fossils of the age of the dinosaurs, which is why it is called a living fossil; it is a gymnosperm with fan-shaped leaves, grown widely as an ornamental…

Besides its normal roots, Cycas bears small branched roots that grow upward near the surface and look like coral; these coralloid roots hold cyanobacteria such as Anabaena and Nostoc, which fix atmospheric nitrogen and supply it to the plant.

Brown algae of the class Phaeophyceae contain chlorophyll a and c along with the xanthophyll pigment fucoxanthin, and because fucoxanthin masks the green chlorophyll the plant looks olive green to deep brown; Laminaria, Sargassum, Fucus, Ectocarpus and Dictyota are examples, and many of them bear air bladders that keep the…

The green algae owe their colour to chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, which are not masked by any other pigment; Chlamydomonas, Volvox, Spirogyra, Ulothrix and Chara belong here, and their stored food is starch.

Agar is obtained chiefly from Gelidium and Gracilaria, members of the Rhodophyceae, and it is used to prepare the solid media on which microbes and plant tissues are grown, as well as in jellies and ice cream.

Ferns and their relatives, such as Selaginella, Lycopodium, Equisetum, Pteris, Adiantum and Marsilea, are the first plants with xylem to conduct water and minerals and phloem to conduct food, and the first with a true root, stem and leaf; for that reason they are also called the vascular cryptogams.

Bryophytes such as Marchantia, Riccia, Funaria and Sphagnum grow on soil, rocks and tree trunks, but their male gametes are flagellate and must swim through a film of water to reach the egg, so fertilisation cannot take place in dry conditions.

Eichler divided the plant kingdom into two: the Cryptogamae, meaning plants with hidden reproductive organs and no seeds, which include the algae or thallophytes, the bryophytes and the pteridophytes; and the Phanerogamae, the seed bearing plants.

The Dandi March of 1930 was a protest against the British salt tax, and common salt is sodium chloride, NaCl.

Arabica, Robusta and Liberica are the main species of the coffee plant, Coffea, grown around the world. Arabica (Coffea arabica) gives a milder, more aromatic coffee and grows best on cool hill slopes at higher altitudes.

An alkali is a base that dissolves in water, so all alkalis are soluble, but not all bases are alkalis; statement 1 has it the wrong way round.

This statement is wrong: biogas is renewable, because the cattle dung, crop waste and kitchen waste it is made from are produced again and again.

Sugarcane needs plenty of water through a long growing season, so it is grown under irrigation or in high-rainfall areas, not as a dryland crop.

The water at the bottom warms, becomes lighter and rises, while cooler water sinks to take its place, and these convection currents carry heat through the pot.

Dolomite is a carbonate of calcium and magnesium, a base that neutralises soil acidity and so raises the pH. Dolomite, CaMg(CO₃)₂, is a common liming material.

Three equal resistors R in parallel have a combined resistance of R/3, and at the same voltage the power, V²/R, becomes three times as large.

Both gain the same kinetic energy, but the electron is far lighter, so it moves much faster. A charge q accelerated through a potential difference V gains kinetic energy qV.