SSC MTS GK Questions 2026

Citrus canker is caused by a species of Xanthomonas, which enters through wounds, insect punctures and stomata and raises raised corky brown lesions, often with a yellow halo, on leaves, twigs and fruit; it spreads in splashing rain, on tools and on infected nursery plants.

The correct answer is A, Colletotrichum falcatum, a fungus that rots the internal tissue of the cane, turning it red with white patches and giving it a sour smell, and which spreads mainly through infected setts used for planting.

The rusts of wheat, named black, brown and yellow after the colour of the pustules they raise on the stem and leaves, are caused by species of Puccinia, and resistance to them was one of the traits selected in the dwarf wheats of the Green Revolution.

The epidemic of the 1840s destroyed the potato crop of Ireland and brought on the famine, and the study of that outbreak by Anton de Bary established plant pathology as a science.

Rammat is the open-air folk theatre of Bikaner and Jaisalmer, performed around Holi on a raised platform with the nagara and the dholak, and its akharas are a part of the towns' Holi calendar.

Panihari takes its name from pani, water, and the songs belong to the daily walk to the well or the stepwell and back with pots on the head; their images are of the rope, the pulley, the pot and the long road, and they often carry a woman's complaint or…

The folklorist Komal Kothari and the Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha founded Rupayan Sansthan at Borunda in Jodhpur district as an institute of folklore, and for half a century it recorded the songs, epics and instruments of the Manganiyars, Langas and Bhopas; Kothari also brought these musicians to audiences outside India.

Ghan instruments are solid bodies that sound when struck or shaken, without a stretched skin or a vibrating string, and the khartal, a pair of wooden blocks clapped together by Manganiyar performers, is the classic Rajasthani example, as are the manjira, the jhanjh, the thali, the chimta, the ghungroo and…

The Terah Taali is performed by women of the Kamad community, devotees of the folk deity Ramdevji of Ramdevra, who tie thirteen manjiras to their wrists, elbows, waist and ankles and strike them in rhythm while seated, often balancing pots or holding a sword in the mouth; the men accompany…

The bhapang is a small drum of a hollowed gourd with a skin head, through which a gut string runs; the player plucks the string and tightens or loosens it to slide the pitch, producing the talking tone of the Mewati folk songs.

The algoza is a double flute: the player holds two pipes at once, blowing a drone on one while playing the melody on the other, and a shepherd or a Langa musician can keep this up for long stretches using circular breathing.

The Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.

Maand is the most refined style of Rajasthani singing, close enough to classical music to be treated as a raga in its own right, and Kesariya Balam Aavo Hamare Desh, made famous by Allah Jilai Bai of Bikaner, is its best known composition and effectively the state's signature song.

A Bhopa of Pabuji unrolls the painted scroll called the phad and sings the epic of Pabuji through the night, accompanying himself on the ravanhatta, a bowed instrument of a half coconut or gourd with a bamboo neck, a skin face and a row of jingling bells.

The kamayacha is the signature instrument of the Manganiyar musicians of Jaisalmer and Barmer: a large bowl of mango wood covered with goat skin, with gut and steel strings played with a horsehair bow, giving the deep drone that accompanies Manganiyar singing.

The fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das, founded the settlement of Ramdaspur around the sacred tank in the late sixteenth century, and the town came to be called Amritsar after the pool of nectar, the Amrit Sarovar.

After defeating Humayun at Chausa and Kannauj, Sher Shah Suri refounded Patna in 1541 as a fortified administrative and commercial town on the ruins of ancient Pataliputra, recognising the strategic value of the site on the Ganga.

Harshavardhana of the Pushyabhuti or Vardhana dynasty began his reign at Thanesar in Haryana and, after the death of his brother-in-law Grahavarman of the Maukhari house, united the two kingdoms and made Kannauj on the Ganga his capital around the early seventh century.

The two brothers of the Sangama family founded the city of Vijayanagara on the Tungabhadra in 1336 and with it the Vijayanagara empire, which lasted until the defeat at Talikota in 1565; the ruins at Hampi in Karnataka are a World Heritage Site.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq was the greatest city builder of the Sultanate. He founded Firozabad on the Yamuna in Delhi, where the Firoz Shah Kotla stands, and outside Delhi he laid out Hisar, known as Hissar-Firoza, along with Fatehabad, Firozpur and Jaunpur, the last named in memory of Muhammad bin Tughlaq…