Madhya Pradesh Mixed Quiz: Set 6

The Nimar plain along the lower Narmada, covering Khargone, Khandwa, Barwani and Burhanpur, has deep black cotton soil and a warm dry growing season, the two conditions cotton needs.

Soybean spread across the black soil of the Malwa plateau and the Narmada valley from the nineteen seventies and now covers more area in Madhya Pradesh than anywhere else in the country, which is why the state is nicknamed the soya state.

The Vindhyan limestone of Satna is thick, pure and close to the surface, so cement works clustered there and the district became the cement capital of the state, with Damoh, Katni, Jabalpur and Neemuch following.

Coal, petroleum and natural gas were formed over millions of years from buried plant and animal remains, so once a seam or a field is worked out it is not replaced in any human timescale.

Burhanpur in the Nimar plain is the banana district of Madhya Pradesh. The warm climate, the deep soil of the Tapti valley and assured irrigation allow a long growing season, and the district sends bananas to markets in north India and exports a part of the crop.

The reason is that the state's rain comes mostly from the Bay of Bengal branch of the monsoon, which enters from the east and weakens as it travels inland, so the farthest north-western corner is driest.

The Vindhyachal station stands on the Singrauli coalfield, drawing coal from mines beside it and water from the Rihand system, and it is the largest thermal power station in the country.

Panna National Park, spread over Panna and Chhatarpur districts along the Ken river, lies beside the diamond bearing tract of Panna, the only diamond mining area worked in India, and it lost its tigers completely before animals brought from other reserves re-established a breeding population, a recovery cited as a…

Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya was established at Jabalpur in the nineteen sixties as the agricultural university for the whole state and still runs colleges and research stations across the eastern and central districts.

The Malwa plateau, around Indore, Ujjain and Dewas, is built of basalt poured out as Deccan trap lava, and the weathering of that basalt has given it the deep black soil on which the state's cotton, wheat and soybean are grown.

Indira Sagar was built at Punasa in Khandwa district and is the largest reservoir of the state and the main storage of the Narmada valley plan, holding water for irrigation and power through the dry months.

Khajuraho is in Chhatarpur district, which lies on the Bundelkhand Plateau, the tract of old granite and gneiss north of the Vindhya that takes in Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Datia, Sagar and Damoh.

The Malwa plateau and the Narmada valley lie on the Deccan lava flows, and the weathering of that basalt produced the deep clayey black soil called regur.

At Bhedaghat, a short distance from Jabalpur, the Narmada falls over a ledge as the Dhuandhar, so called because the spray rises like smoke, and then runs for a few kilometres between white and pink marble cliffs, the Marble Rocks.

The solar park built in Rewa district was among the largest single site solar parks in the country when it was commissioned, and part of its electricity is bought by the Delhi Metro, the first sale of solar power from such a park to a buyer outside the state.

Gram, also called chana, is the biggest rabi pulse of the country and Madhya Pradesh grows more of it than any other state, mostly without irrigation, on the moisture that black soil holds after the monsoon.

Under this scheme the government does not buy and store the crop. The farmer sells in the regulated market as usual, and if the price received is below the price the government has declared for that crop, the gap is paid into the farmer's bank account.

Conventional sources are those in long use before modern technology offered alternatives, that is coal, petroleum, natural gas, firewood, cattle dung cake and water power.

Kharif crops are sown with the arrival of the south west monsoon in June and July and harvested in September and October, so they grow through the hottest and wettest months of the year.

Pachmarhi sits on a plateau in the Satpura range south of the Narmada, and Dhupgarh beside it, at about 1,350 metres, is the highest point of Madhya Pradesh; the height gives the place its cool climate, its heavy rain and the biosphere reserve around it.