UPSC GK Questions 2026

Mustard is the great rabi oilseed of Rajasthan, sown in October and November across Bharatpur, Alwar, Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and the canal districts of the north-west, and the state harvests more of it than any other.

Kharif crops are sown with the arrival of the south west monsoon in June and July and harvested in September and October, so they grow through the hottest and wettest months of the year.

Under this scheme the government does not buy and store the crop. The farmer sells in the regulated market as usual, and if the price received is below the price the government has declared for that crop, the gap is paid into the farmer's bank account.

The Malwa plateau and the Narmada valley lie on the Deccan lava flows, and the weathering of that basalt produced the deep clayey black soil called regur.

Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya was established at Jabalpur in the nineteen sixties as the agricultural university for the whole state and still runs colleges and research stations across the eastern and central districts.

Burhanpur in the Nimar plain is the banana district of Madhya Pradesh. The warm climate, the deep soil of the Tapti valley and assured irrigation allow a long growing season, and the district sends bananas to markets in north India and exports a part of the crop.

The Nimar plain along the lower Narmada, covering Khargone, Khandwa, Barwani and Burhanpur, has deep black cotton soil and a warm dry growing season, the two conditions cotton needs.

Balaghat lies in the wet south eastern corner of the state, where rainfall is high and red and yellow soils suit paddy, and the district has long grown Chinnor, a short grained aromatic rice valued for its fragrance after cooking.

The Kadaknath is a black fleshed fowl reared by tribal families in Jhabua and the neighbouring districts of western Madhya Pradesh.

Opium may be grown in India only under a licence from the Central Bureau of Narcotics, and the permitted tract of Madhya Pradesh lies in these western Malwa districts, continuing across the border into Chittorgarh and Pratapgarh in Rajasthan.

This central belt, lying on the deep black soil of the Narmada valley and its Malwa fringe, grows the hard amber grained wheat known as Sharbati.

Gram, also called chana, is the biggest rabi pulse of the country and Madhya Pradesh grows more of it than any other state, mostly without irrigation, on the moisture that black soil holds after the monsoon.

Soybean spread across the black soil of the Malwa plateau and the Narmada valley from the nineteen seventies and now covers more area in Madhya Pradesh than anywhere else in the country, which is why the state is nicknamed the soya state.

The Hariana is the indigenous cattle breed of the Rohtak, Hisar, Jind and Gurugram tract, a dual purpose animal that gives milk and whose bullocks were once the standard draught animal of the north western plains.

Vita is the brand of the Haryana Dairy Development Cooperative Federation, which collects milk from village societies and sells milk, ghee, butter, paneer and sweets under that name.

Decades of the paddy and wheat rotation have pushed the water table down sharply in central Haryana, and many blocks are classed as over exploited.

This is the drier half of Haryana, where rainfall is low, summers are hot and the soil is light, and cotton suits those conditions better than paddy does.

The barrage stands on the Yamuna in Yamunanagar district, where the river enters the plains, and it feeds the Western Yamuna Canal of Haryana on one bank and the Eastern Yamuna Canal of Uttar Pradesh on the other.

The Murrah is a jet black buffalo with short tightly curled horns, bred in Rohtak, Jind, Hisar and the neighbouring districts.

The National Dairy Research Institute, a deemed university under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, has its main campus at Karnal and works on dairy cattle and buffalo breeding, milk processing and dairy technology.