Agriculture and Crops of India: Seasons and Regions

The correct answer is D, rainy. Kharif crops are sown in June and July with the onset of the south-west monsoon and harvested in September and October, because they need both high temperature and heavy rainfall while growing. Paddy, maize, jowar, bajra, tur, moong, urad, cotton, groundnut, soyabean and jute are the standard kharif crops of India.

Option A is wrong because crops sown at the beginning of winter, in October and November, are rabi crops such as wheat, barley, gram, peas and mustard. Option B is wrong because the short summer season between rabi and kharif is the zaid season, used for watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber and fodder. Option C is wrong because spring is not recognised as a cropping season in the Indian classification at all, so no crop group is named after it.

The correct answer is A, wheat. Wheat is the leading rabi crop of India. It is sown in October and November, needs a cool season of about fifty to sixty centimetres of rainfall for growth and bright sunshine at the time of ripening, and is harvested in March and April. Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh are its main producing States.

Option B is wrong because groundnut is a kharif oilseed sown with the monsoon, mainly in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. Option C is wrong because paddy is the classic kharif crop, needing more than a hundred centimetres of rainfall and standing water in the field. Option D is wrong because maize is grown as a kharif crop across most of India, although it is also raised as a rabi crop in parts of Bihar, which is why the question asks for the general classification.

The correct answer is B, barley and gram. Both are sown in October and November after the monsoon withdraws and harvested in March and April. Barley is a coarse cereal grown mainly in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and gram is the most important rabi pulse of India, grown in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

Option A is wrong because peas are a rabi crop but maize is grown mainly in the kharif season, so the pair is mixed. Option C is wrong because both paddy and cotton are kharif crops and neither is rabi. Option D is wrong for the same mixed reason: wheat is rabi but jowar is a kharif millet in most of India. Only option B has two crops that are rabi and nothing else, which is what the word only in the question demands.

The correct answer is D, cotton. In the colour coding of India's agricultural revolutions the Silver Fibre Revolution stands for cotton, the fibre crop of the black soil regions of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana. The plain Silver Revolution, without the word fibre, refers to eggs and poultry, and the two are deliberately offered together in papers.

Option A is wrong because leather and cocoa belong to the Brown Revolution. Option B is wrong because oilseeds, especially mustard and sunflower, belong to the Yellow Revolution. Option C is wrong because jute has no colour revolution of its own; it is simply called the golden fibre, which makes it a tempting but incorrect choice here. Learning the list, Green for food grains, White for milk, Blue for fish and Pink for prawn, settles this family of questions.

The correct answer is A, cotton. The pink bollworm is the most damaging pest of the cotton plant. Its larva bores into the boll and feeds on the developing seed and lint, so the damage is hidden until the boll opens, and it has developed resistance to some insect-resistant cotton varieties, which is why it keeps returning to the news.

Option B is wrong because silk is produced by the silkworm, which is reared rather than protected from pests of this kind, and the word bollworm itself points to a boll, a cotton structure. Option C is wrong because the main pests of mustard are the aphid and the sawfly. Option D is wrong because apple orchards suffer from the codling moth and the woolly aphid. Only cotton forms bolls, so only cotton can host a bollworm.

The correct answer is B, black soil. Black soil, also called regur or black cotton soil, covers much of the Deccan plateau and is formed from the weathering of lava. It holds moisture for long periods, develops deep cracks in the dry season that help aeration, and is rich in calcium carbonate, magnesium and potash, all of which suit a crop needing about 210 frost-free days.

Option A is wrong because laterite soil is leached and low in fertility, suited to cashew, tea and coffee after heavy manuring. Option C is wrong because red soil, formed from crystalline rock, is poor in nitrogen and humus and is used mainly for millets and pulses. Option D is wrong because peaty soil forms in waterlogged areas such as the Kerala backwaters and is used for rice, not cotton.

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. Podu is the local name for slash and burn or shifting cultivation in Andhra Pradesh, where a patch of forest is cleared, burnt and cropped for a few years and then left to recover while the cultivator moves to a fresh patch. The practice survives among tribal communities on the hill slopes of the Eastern Ghats.

Option A is wrong because the same practice is called kumari in Kerala. Option C is wrong because in Madhya Pradesh it is called bewar, dahiya, penda or beera depending on the district. Option D is wrong because in Assam and the rest of the North East it is called jhum, which is the name most often asked, and is the reason the other names are offered as distractors in questions of this kind.

The correct answer is C, jute. Jute is called the golden fibre because of its shining golden brown colour and the high export value it once commanded. It is a kharif crop grown on the well-drained alluvial soil of flood plains that is renewed every year, needs high temperature during growth, and is used for gunny bags, mats, ropes, yarn and carpets. West Bengal is the leading producer, followed by Bihar and Assam.

Option A is wrong because cotton is the white fibre of the black soil region and is linked with the Silver Fibre Revolution. Option B is wrong because silk is an animal fibre obtained from the cocoon of the silkworm, not a field crop. Option D is wrong because hemp, though a bast fibre like jute, is a minor crop in India and carries no such title.

The correct answer is B, the White Revolution. Operation Flood was the dairy development programme of the National Dairy Development Board that linked village milk producers' cooperatives to city markets and made India the largest milk producer in the world. Verghese Kurien, who built the Amul model at Anand in Gujarat, is called the father of the White Revolution in India.

Option A is wrong because the Yellow Revolution refers to the rise in oilseed production, especially mustard and sunflower. Option C is wrong because the Blue Revolution refers to fisheries and aquaculture. Option D is wrong because the Golden Revolution refers to horticulture, including fruits, vegetables and honey. Milk belongs only to the White Revolution, and Operation Flood is its programme name.

Remember also that Operation Flood ran in three phases from 1970 and was funded partly by the sale of donated milk powder and butter oil, and that the Anand pattern of a three-tier cooperative structure was copied across the country.

The correct answer is B, they fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. Pulses are leguminous plants whose roots carry nodules containing Rhizobium bacteria. These bacteria convert nitrogen from the air into compounds the plant can use, and part of that nitrogen stays in the soil after harvest, so the cereal that follows needs less fertiliser. This is why pulses are called soil-restoring crops.

Option A is wrong because although most pulses are hardy, low water demand is a convenience and not the reason for rotation. Option C is wrong because speed of growth is not the purpose of a rotation, which is designed to restore fertility and break pest cycles. Option D is wrong because pulses have their own serious pests, such as the pod borer and the aphid, so they resist nothing of the kind.

The correct answer is A, a single crop is grown on a large estate for sale. Plantation agriculture is a type of commercial farming in which one crop such as tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane or banana is grown over a large area with hired labour, capital investment and a processing unit on or near the estate. Good transport is essential because the produce is meant for distant markets.

Option B is wrong because growing many crops on a small plot for the household is intensive subsistence farming. Option C is wrong because burning forest patches and cropping them briefly is shifting cultivation, called jhum or podu. Option D is wrong because raising fodder alone is part of mixed farming and dairying, not a plantation. The marks of a plantation are one crop, a large estate and sale.

The correct answer is B, ICAR, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. It was founded in 1929 as the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, has its headquarters at New Delhi and coordinates research, education and extension through a national network of institutes and agricultural universities.

Option A is wrong because NABARD, set up in 1982, is the apex institution for rural and agricultural credit, not research. Option C is wrong because the Food Corporation of India handles the procurement, storage and distribution of food grains. Option D is wrong because the National Dairy Development Board is concerned with dairy development and ran Operation Flood. Only ICAR is the research and education apex body.

A related fact often asked alongside is that the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at New Delhi, which began at Pusa in Bihar, is the institute that bred many of the high-yielding wheat varieties of the Green Revolution.