UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Milpa is the local name given to the slash-and-burn system of the Mexican and Central American forests, where maize, beans and squash are grown together on a burnt forest clearing for a few seasons.

A plantation crop is a single cash crop grown on a large estate with heavy capital, hired labour and processing of the produce on or near the estate, and coffee, grown in the hills of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, is a classic example along with tea, rubber and sugarcane.

Olericulture is the branch of horticulture that deals with vegetables, covering their production in the field, their storage, their processing and their marketing, and it is the branch on which market gardening and truck farming rest.

The pea's ovary is made of one carpel whose two margins fuse to form a ridge, and the ovules are arranged in two rows along that ridge; this is marginal placentation, and it is why the pod opens to show a single row of seeds on each side.

A drupe is a fleshy fruit with a thin epicarp, a mesocarp that may be pulpy as in the mango or fibrous as in the coconut, and a hard, stony endocarp enclosing a single seed; the coconut's shell is that endocarp and the white kernel is the seed.

A true fruit forms from the ovary alone, but in the apple and the pear the thalamus grows, becomes fleshy and forms the greater part of the edible tissue, while the ovary makes only the core; such a fruit is called a false or spurious fruit, and the specific type…

In vexillary or papilionaceous aestivation the corolla has five petals of unequal size: one large posterior petal, the standard, which covers two lateral wing petals, which in turn cover the two smallest anterior petals that are fused into a keel.

In a racemose inflorescence the main axis does not end in a flower but keeps growing, so the lowest flower is the oldest and the youngest buds are at the tip; this upward order is called acropetal, as in radish, mustard and Larkspur.

In a monocot leaf, such as that of wheat, maize, grass, banana or canna, the veins run side by side along the length of the lamina without forming a network, and this parallel venation goes with the other monocot features: one cotyledon in the seed, a fibrous root system, scattered…

In Opuntia and in many Euphorbia species the leaves are reduced to spines to cut down transpiration, and the stem takes over photosynthesis by becoming flattened, green and fleshy; such a stem is a phylloclade.

The mud of a tidal swamp is waterlogged and almost free of oxygen, so these plants send up roots that grow vertically out of the soil into the air and take in oxygen through pores; such roots grow against gravity and are therefore called negatively geotropic.

The banyan's horizontal branches grow so long and heavy that they send down thick aerial roots which reach the soil, thicken into pillars and carry the weight of the branch; these are called prop or pillar roots.

The carrot stores food in its primary root, which is broad at the top and tapers steadily to a point, and that shape is described as conical.

The potato is an underground stem tuber, the swollen tip of an underground branch, and the proof is in its morphology: it bears nodes, the depressions called eyes, and each eye carries an axillary bud that can sprout into a new shoot.

Halophytes are plants of saline soils, chiefly the mangroves of tidal creeks and deltas such as Rhizophora and Avicennia, and their morphology is shaped by that habitat: they bear pneumatophores, negatively geotropic breathing roots that rise out of the waterlogged mud, along with stilt and prop roots for support and…

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita requires a court to pronounce its judgment within forty-five days of the completion of the trial, with a further short extension allowed for reasons recorded in writing.

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita makes forensic investigation compulsory for offences punishable with imprisonment of seven years or more: a forensic expert must visit the scene of crime, collect the forensic evidence and record the process on a mobile phone or another electronic device.

A Zero FIR is registered without a regular serial number at any police station when information about a cognizable offence is given there, and it is then transferred to the police station having jurisdiction over the place of the offence, where it gets a regular number.

Sedition as it stood in Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code has not been carried into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita carries 358 sections, while the Indian Penal Code which it replaced had 511 sections; chapters were merged and several obsolete offences were removed, so the number came down.