Environment & Ecology Quiz: Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Seed Banks: Ex-situ Conservation

The correct answer is D, a botanical garden. Ex-situ conservation means keeping a species, or only its germplasm, outside its natural habitat, which is what a botanical garden, a zoo, an aquarium, a seed bank, a gene bank or a conservation breeding centre does. Option A is wrong because a biosphere reserve conserves a whole landscape with its core, buffer and transition zones, which is in-situ conservation. Option B is wrong because a wildlife sanctuary protects animals where they live, with limited human activity allowed, again in-situ. Option C is wrong because a national park is the strictest form of in-situ protection, where grazing and private rights are not permitted. The quickest test is to ask whether the species stays in its habitat; if it does, the method is in-situ.

The correct answer is A, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The amendment of 1991 inserted the provisions on zoos into that Act, and the Central Zoo Authority was constituted in 1992 to recognise zoos, prescribe standards for animal housing, upkeep and veterinary care and coordinate conservation breeding; a zoo without its recognition cannot operate. Option B is wrong because the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 is the umbrella law under which notifications such as eco-sensitive zones and coastal regulation zones are issued. Option C is wrong because the Biological Diversity Act of 2002 created the National Biodiversity Authority, which deals with access to biological resources and benefit sharing. Option D is wrong because the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 governs the diversion of forest land for non-forest use.

The correct answer is B, the Alipore Zoological Garden in Kolkata, opened to the public in 1876 and therefore the oldest formally established zoo in the country. Option A is wrong because the National Zoological Park in Delhi dates from 1959 and was planned as a model zoo for the capital. Option C is wrong because the Nehru Zoological Park at Hyderabad was opened in the 1960s and is known for its safari enclosures and nocturnal animal house. Option D is wrong because the Arignar Anna Zoological Park at Vandalur near Chennai, though the largest zoo in India by area, was opened in 1985 after shifting from the older Madras zoo. A related fact often asked alongside is that the Mysuru zoo of 1892 is the second of the old zoos and the Darjeeling zoo the highest in altitude.

The correct answer is B, Robert Kyd, an officer of the East India Company who proposed and founded the garden at Shibpur in Howrah in 1787, first for growing plants of economic value such as teak and spices. Option A is wrong because William Roxburgh, often called the father of Indian botany, was its superintendent after Kyd and compiled the Flora Indica, which is a different contribution. Option C is wrong because Joseph Hooker travelled in the Himalaya and the Khasi hills and wrote on their flora but did not found this garden. Option D is wrong because the garden was renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in his honour in 2009, long after his death, which is why his name is attached to it today. The garden holds the Great Banyan Tree.

The correct answer is A, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at New Delhi, an institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which holds the National Gene Bank where seeds of crop plants and their wild relatives are stored at low temperature for long-term conservation. Option B is wrong because the Botanical Survey of India, founded in 1890 with its headquarters at Kolkata, surveys and documents plant wealth and maintains herbaria and gardens rather than a crop gene bank. Option C is wrong because the National Botanical Research Institute at Lucknow, a CSIR laboratory, works on plant conservation, taxonomy and economic botany. Option D is wrong because the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Delhi is a research and teaching institute; the gene bank stands on the same campus but belongs to the Bureau.

The correct answer is B, Kolkata. The Botanical Survey of India was founded in 1890 with its headquarters in Kolkata, close to the Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah, and it surveys the plant resources of the country, publishes floras and maintains herbaria and botanical gardens through its regional circles. Option A is wrong because Dehradun is the headquarters of the Forest Survey of India, the Wildlife Institute of India and the Forest Research Institute, and this is the likeliest confusion in the question. Option C is wrong because Lucknow houses the National Botanical Research Institute and the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources. Option D is wrong because New Delhi has the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources and the environment ministry, not the Survey's headquarters. Pair 1890 and Kolkata together.

The correct answer is B, recalcitrant seeds. These seeds lose their viability when their moisture content is reduced, so they cannot be kept in the cold rooms of a seed bank; mango, jackfruit, coconut, cocoa and most tropical fruit trees are examples, and they are conserved instead in field gene banks, as tissue cultures or in cryobanks. Option A is wrong because orthodox seeds, such as wheat, rice, maize and most pulses, can be dried to a low moisture content and frozen, and they are the seeds that gene banks store for decades. Option C is wrong because dormancy is a resting state from which a seed can germinate when conditions are right, and it says nothing about storage. Option D is wrong because hybrid refers to parentage, not to storage behaviour.

The correct answer is C, about minus 196 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, at which all metabolic activity in the stored material stops and the germplasm can be kept for very long periods without change. Option A is wrong because minus 20 degrees is the temperature of ordinary long-term seed storage in a gene bank, not of cryopreservation. Option B is wrong because minus 80 degrees is the range of deep freezers used for vaccines and biological samples. Option D is wrong because minus 273 degrees Celsius is close to absolute zero, which laboratory cryopreservation does not use. Remember the pair: minus 20 degrees for seed banks and minus 196 degrees for cryobanks, because examiners place the two figures in the same set of options.

The correct answer is B, Rajasthan. The breeding centres stand in the Jaisalmer region, near the Desert National Park, which holds the largest surviving population of the bird, and they are run by the state forest department with the Wildlife Institute of India: eggs are collected from the wild, hatched in incubators and the chicks reared for release. Option A is wrong, though Gujarat has bustard habitat in the Kutch grasslands and is part of the recovery programme. Option C is wrong because Maharashtra has a small population in the Nannaj area of Solapur but no breeding centre of this kind. Option D is wrong because Madhya Pradesh is associated with the cheetah reintroduction at Kuno, not with the bustard. The Great Indian Bustard is the state bird of Rajasthan, which makes the pairing easier to remember.

The correct answer is B, Kuno National Park in the Sheopur area of Madhya Pradesh, where cheetahs brought from Namibia and South Africa were released from 2022 under the cheetah reintroduction project; the cheetah had been declared extinct in India in 1952. Option A is wrong because Kanha, in the Maikal range, is a tiger reserve best known for saving the hard-ground barasingha. Option C is wrong because Bandhavgarh is a tiger reserve famous for its fort and its high density of tigers. Option D is wrong because Panna is remembered for the successful reintroduction of tigers after the local population was wiped out, which is a different programme often confused with the cheetah project. Kuno had earlier been prepared as a second home for the Asiatic lion of Gir.

The correct answer is A, the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park at Darjeeling, the highest altitude zoo in India, which runs recognised conservation breeding programmes for the red panda, the snow leopard and the Himalayan wolf, and has released captive-bred red pandas into the Singalila landscape. Option B is wrong because the Mysuru zoo of 1892, though among the oldest and most visited, is not a high-altitude zoo and is known for its wide range of exotic species. Option C is wrong because the Alipore zoo in Kolkata is the oldest in the country, dating from 1876. Option D is wrong because Nandankanan near Bhubaneswar is famous for white tigers and for being the first zoo in India to breed the gharial in captivity, which is itself a frequently asked fact.