State Exams GK Questions 2026

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jute is called the golden fibre because of its shining golden brown colour and the high export value it once commanded.

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.

Black soil, also called regur or black cotton soil, covers much of the Deccan plateau and is formed from the weathering of lava.

The pink bollworm is the most damaging pest of the cotton plant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The natural mineral form of mercuric sulphide is cinnabar, the chief ore of mercury, and its bright red powdered form has been used as the pigment vermilion for centuries.

Liquefied petroleum gas is a mixture of butane and propane and is by itself almost odourless, so a leak could fill a room unnoticed.

Temporary hardness is caused by the dissolved bicarbonates of calcium and magnesium. On boiling, these bicarbonates decompose into insoluble carbonates, which settle out as the scale seen in a kettle, so the water that remains is soft.

In a soda-acid extinguisher a solution of sodium hydrogen carbonate is kept in the body of the cylinder and sulphuric acid in a sealed glass phial.

When milk is set into curd, the bacteria Lactobacillus convert the milk sugar lactose into lactic acid, and it is this acid that gives curd its sour taste and makes the milk protein clot.

Aqua regia is a freshly prepared mixture of three parts concentrated hydrochloric acid to one part concentrated nitric acid. Neither acid alone attacks gold, but together they do, because the nitric acid oxidises the metal while the chloride ions hold the gold in solution as a complex.

Gypsum is calcium sulphate dihydrate, and heating it carefully to about 373 kelvin drives off three quarters of its water to leave calcium sulphate hemihydrate, which is Plaster of Paris.

It is a mild, non-corrosive base. In baking it releases carbon dioxide on heating and makes the dough rise, in medicine it neutralises excess acid in the stomach, and in a soda-acid fire extinguisher it reacts with sulphuric acid to produce the carbon dioxide that smothers the flame.