SSC CGL GK Questions 2026

The Danube rises in the Black Forest of Germany, flows east through central Europe and reaches the Black Sea, and it passes the capitals of Austria, Hungary and Serbia, which is why it is said to water more capital cities than any other river in the world.

Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh and the old seat of the Nawabs of Awadh, stands on the Gomti, a tributary of the Ganga that rises in the Pilibhit district.

Its cotton textile mills, which began in the 1860s and multiplied in the early twentieth century, earned it the comparison with the English mill town of Manchester.

The Tata Iron and Steel Company plant of 1907 was built at Sakchi, later renamed Jamshedpur, where the Subarnarekha and its tributary the Kharkai meet, close to the coal of Jharia and the iron ore of Odisha.

Hyderabad was founded in 1591 on the Musi, a tributary of the Krishna, and the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar reservoirs built on the Musi still help supply the city.

Ahmedabad was founded by Ahmad Shah in 1411 on the left bank of the Sabarmati, and the river gives its name to the Sabarmati Ashram from which Gandhi began the Dandi march in 1930.

Cytokinins promote cytokinesis, that is cell division; kinetin was the first of them to be identified, from the degraded DNA of herring sperm, and zeatin, the natural form, was obtained from maize grains.

Jute is a bast or stem fibre taken from the inner bark of plants of the genus Corchorus, extracted by soaking the cut stems in water, a process called retting, and India and Bangladesh are the main producers.

Clove is the unopened flower bud of Syzygium aromaticum, picked before it blooms and dried, and it is grown in India chiefly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Quinine is an alkaloid extracted from the bark of trees of the genus Cinchona, native to South America and grown in India in the Nilgiris and in Darjeeling, and it was the standard treatment for malaria before synthetic drugs appeared.

Saffron is made from the stigmas of the flower of Crocus sativus, and since each flower carries only three stigmas which must be picked by hand, the spice is the most expensive in the world; in India it is grown mainly in the Kashmir valley.

2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid is a synthetic auxin, and when it is sprayed in a heavy dose it throws broad-leaved dicot weeds into uncontrolled growth that kills them, while narrow-leaved cereals such as wheat and rice are far less affected, so it clears weeds from a standing crop.

Auxin made at the shoot tip moves downwards and keeps the lateral buds below it inactive, which is why a gardener who nips off the tip of a hedge plant gets a bushy growth of side branches.

Japanese rice plants attacked by this fungus grew abnormally tall and spindly, a condition called the foolish seedling or bakanae disease, and the substance responsible was isolated from the fungus and named gibberellin; gibberellic acid is the best known member of the group.

It is produced when a plant faces drought, salinity or extreme temperature; it closes the stomata so that water is not lost, for which reason it is called an antitranspirant, and it induces dormancy in seeds and buds so that growth waits for better conditions.

Ethylene is the only gaseous plant hormone, and it raises the rate of respiration in climacteric fruits such as banana, mango and tomato, so a single ripe fruit speeds up the ripening of those around it; the compound ethephon releases ethylene and is used in orchards for uniform ripening.

The Telugu film-maker K. Viswanath received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2016, presented in May 2017. Kasinadhuni Viswanath was known for films built around Indian classical music and dance, above all Sankarabharanam (1980), as well as Sagara Sangamam and Swathi Muthyam.

Excavations at these two localities of modern Patna have uncovered the main remains of Mauryan Pataliputra. At Bulandibagh, digging in the early twentieth century exposed long lines of heavy wooden palisade, matching the Greek envoy Megasthenes' description of a city surrounded by a timber wall with towers and gates.

The OSCE has 57 participating states and works as a forum for dialogue on early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation, but it is neither a military body nor a maker of binding law.

Both statements are true, and black soil suits rain-fed farming precisely because it holds moisture for a long time. Black soil, or regur, formed from the weathering of Deccan basalt and is rich in clay, iron, lime and magnesium.