What is the corpus of the Research, Development and Innovation Fund?

The correct answer is the Technology Development Board, usually shortened to TDB, whose 30th Foundation Day was the occasion for the address. The board was created so that technologies would not remain confined to laboratories but would be translated into products, solutions and enterprises that bring ease of living, provide livelihoods and add to the economy of the country. The Minister praised its record in carrying work from laboratory to market, and named Skyroot and BotLab as examples of firms it has supported beyond narrowly defined domains. He also said TDB was the first to roll out proposals under the RDI Fund, and that it should now support technology development in the early phase as well as at the later stage. The other options are genuine institutions in the science ecosystem but none is named in this release as the host of the event.

The correct answer is more than half. The Minister said start-ups are not confined to Bengaluru or Hyderabad and that more than 50 per cent of them come from smaller towns, a figure he used while asking for prevailing myths about entrepreneurship to be dispelled. He added a second myth to the list, that entrepreneurship belongs to the young, and pointed to the participation of women in the ecosystem as well. The other options understate the share and would leave a candidate with the opposite impression of where Indian enterprise is now being built. The same passage of the address carries a related point worth remembering: openness to private participation has been followed in sectors including space, biotechnology and the nuclear sector, and the pooling of resources across institutions and stakeholders is treated as important for strengthening the ecosystem.

The correct answer is TRL4. Speaking about what lies ahead, the Minister noted that the RDI Fund is offering support at a later stage, at the TRL4 level, and that the Technology Development Board was the first to roll out its proposals under the fund. He argued that the board should support technology development both in the early phase and at this later stage, so that promising work is not left without backing at either end. The other options are levels on the same technology readiness scale and are placed there to test whether the specific level was read carefully rather than guessed. Two more sentences from the address are worth carrying with this fact: TDB has set up a model of public-private transition and technology self-reliance, and the Minister linked strengthening India's technological capability to the country's standing in the Global South.

The correct answer is ICAR-NDRI, Karnal and G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar. The programme was a collaboration between the two, with financial support from the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council at Haldi. It was begun in 2023 on the initiative of Dr M. S. Chauhan, then Vice-Chancellor of the university, and over the following three years the teams established ovum pick-up, embryo production and embryo transfer procedures for this breed. Dr Dheer Singh, Director of ICAR-NDRI, said such advanced reproductive technologies can multiply elite female germplasm faster and support structured breed-improvement programmes. The other options mix genuine agricultural research bodies and universities of the region that were not partners in this work, and they test whether the candidate remembers the exact pair rather than a general sense that a dairy institute and a state agricultural university were involved.

The correct answer is Sahiwal. Under the programme, oocytes were collected from genetically valuable Badri donor cows through ultrasound-guided ovum pick-up, matured and fertilised in the laboratory with semen from a genetically superior Badri bull, and grown as embryos under controlled conditions. One such Badri embryo was placed in a synchronised Sahiwal recipient cow, which then gave birth to the healthy Badri female calf. The recipient cow simply carries the pregnancy, so the calf keeps the genetics of the Badri donor and bull rather than those of the animal that bears it. Options A, B and D name other well-known indigenous cattle breeds of India, and any of them could have served as a recipient in principle, which is exactly what makes them useful distractors. Another synchronised crossbred recipient cow was also expected to deliver a Badri calf soon after.