UPHESC Assistant Professor Agricultural Botany PYQs

Concept: Dharmashastras (Manusmriti) list eight forms of marriage.

1. Approved: Brahma, Daiva, Arsha, Prajapatya.
2. Disapproved: Asura, Gandharva, Rakshasa, Paishacha.

Short trick: 4 good + 4 bad = 8.

Concept: Subhas Chandra Bose likened Gandhi's Dandi March (1930) to Napoleon's march to Paris on his return from Elba.

1. Lala Lajpat Rai had died in 1928, before the march.
2. Bose's comparison appears in 'The Indian Struggle'.

Short trick: Netaji – the soldier – used a military (Napoleon) comparison.

Concept: Monazite is a phosphate of rare-earths and thorium, found in Kerala beach sands.

1. It is India's main source of thorium (India has large thorium reserves).
2. Uranium mainly from Jaduguda (Jharkhand).

Short trick: Monazite of Kerala → Thorium.

Concept: The Enfield rifle (P-1853) replaced the old 'Brown Bess' musket.

1. Its cartridges, said to be greased with cow and pig fat, had to be bitten open – the immediate cause of the 1857 revolt.
2. 'Brown Bess' was the old musket.

Short trick: Enfield cartridge → 1857.

Concept: In the standard textbook account of the Delhi Sultanate, Firoz Shah Tughlaq is the ruler under whom Sanskrit works (many taken from the Jwalamukhi temple library at Nagarkot) were translated into Persian, and the music work 'Ragdarpan' is listed among them.

1. The astronomy work 'Dalail-i-Firozshahi' was prepared in the same way in his reign.
2. Alauddin Khilji, Akbar and Jahangir are not linked with this translation in that account, so among the options Firoz Shah Tughlaq fits.
3. (A later Persian treatise also called 'Rag Darpan' was written by Faqirullah in Aurangzeb's time — Aurangzeb is not among the options.)

Short trick: Firoz Tughlaq = Persian translations of Nagarkot Sanskrit texts (Dalail-i-Firozshahi, Ragdarpan).

Concept: R. C. Dutt wrote 'The Economic History of India' (2 vols, 1902–04): 'Under Early British Rule' and 'In the Victorian Age'.

1. Dadabhai Naoroji wrote 'Poverty and Un-British Rule in India' (drain theory).
2. Tilak – 'Gita Rahasya'; Gokhale – economist-politician, no such book.

Short trick: Dutt – Two volumes; Naoroji – Drain.

Concept: Part XV (Articles 324–329A) deals with Elections; Article 324 creates the Election Commission.

1. Part IV – Directive Principles.
2. Part VIII – Union Territories.
3. Part IX – Panchayats.

Short trick: Elections = Part 15 = Art 324.

Concept: The first RRB, Prathama Grameen Bank (Moradabad, UP, sponsored by Syndicate Bank), was set up on 2 October 1975.

1. RRBs came under an Ordinance of 1975, replaced by the RRB Act, 1976.
2. Do not confuse the Act year (1976) with the first bank (1975).

Short trick: Prathama – first – 2 Oct 1975 – Moradabad.

Concept: A 'zombie' firm is one whose operating profit cannot even cover its interest, i.e. interest coverage ratio (ICR = EBIT ÷ interest) < 1; fresh lending to such firms is called zombie lending.

1. The ICR < 1 test is the usual working definition used in Indian policy discussion (RBI and Economic Survey analyses of stressed corporate loans).
2. 'Verge of default' (A) and 'evergreening' (C) are related ideas but not the defining test; (D) describes a group, not the lending.

Short trick: Zombie = alive on paper, dead in earnings → ICR < 1.

Concept: Article 21-A (86th Amendment, 2002) – free and compulsory education for children aged 6–14 years.

1. Article 21 – life and personal liberty.
2. Articles 23–24 – right against exploitation.
3. Articles 29–30 – minority rights.

Short trick: 21 = life, 21-A = education (RTE Act 2009).

Concept: Modern (molecular/phylogenetic) classification of bacteria uses 16S rRNA gene sequencing, introduced by Carl Woese.

1. 16S rRNA is present in all prokaryotes, highly conserved with variable regions – ideal molecular clock.
2. Woese's 16S rRNA work gave the three-domain system (1990).
3. Gram staining, morphology and biochemical tests are classical, phenotypic methods.

Short trick: Woese + 16S = modern, molecular, three domains.

Concept: A basidium occurs only in Basidiomycotina; the forked 'tuning-fork' basidium is characteristic of jelly fungi (Dacrymycetales, e.g. Dacrymyces).

1. Holobasidium (club-shaped) – Agaricales; phragmobasidium (septate) – rusts, Tremella; tuning-fork – Dacrymyces.
2. Ascomycotina bear asci, Deuteromycotina have no sexual stage, Myxomycotina are slime moulds.

Short trick: No basidium outside Basidiomycotina – whatever its shape.

Concept: Flagellar arrangement: monotrichous (one polar flagellum), amphitrichous (one at each pole), lophotrichous (a tuft at one or both poles), peritrichous (all over the cell).

1. Thiobacillus – single polar flagellum → monotrichous (a-3). Nitrosomonas – polar flagella.
2. Salmonella and E. coli are both peritrichous, so List II has two peritrichous bacteria and nothing that is truly lophotrichous — no one-to-one match can be fully right.
3. Code (B) a-3, b-4, c-1, d-2 comes closest, but it calls Salmonella lophotrichous, which is wrong; (A) and (D) make E. coli or Salmonella monotrichous and (C) makes E. coli amphitrichous — also wrong.
4. As printed, no code is fully correct.

Short trick: Enteric rods (E. coli, Salmonella, Proteus) = peritrichous; Vibrio/Thiobacillus = monotrichous; Spirillum = lophotrichous.

Concept: R. H. Whittaker (1969) proposed five kingdoms: Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia.

1. Criteria: cell type, body organisation, mode of nutrition, reproduction and phylogeny.
2. Tatum – one gene–one enzyme; Ehrlich – chemotherapy; Stanley – crystallised TMV.

Short trick: Whittaker 1969 – 5; Woese 1990 – 3 domains.

Concept: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first saw and described bacteria and protozoa ('animalcules', 1676) with his own single-lens microscopes – Father of Microbiology.

1. Anton de Bary – Father of Mycology/modern plant pathology.
2. Winogradsky – Father of soil microbiology.
3. Stanley – crystallised TMV (Nobel 1946).

Short trick: Leeuwenhoek – first to see microbes.

Concept: Doi, Teranaka, Yora and Asuyama (1967, Japan) saw mycoplasma-like organisms in phloem of plants with yellows diseases (mulberry dwarf).

1. MLOs were renamed phytoplasmas in 1994.
2. Bawden & Pirie – TMV is a nucleoprotein; E. F. Smith – bacterial plant diseases.

Short trick: Doi 1967 – Japan – MLO.

Concept: Osmophiles (e.g. sugar-tolerant yeasts like Zygosaccharomyces) prefer media with high osmotic concentration, such as high sugar.

1. Halophiles need high salt; xerophiles tolerate low water activity/matric potential.
2. Most other microbes are inhibited by high osmotic pressure – the basis of preservation by sugar and salt.

Short trick: Osmo-phile = loves osmotic pressure (honey, jam).

Concept: Match each disease with its fungus.

1. Root rot – Rhizoctonia spp. (a-2).
2. Wheat rust – Puccinia (b-3).
3. Common smut of maize – Ustilago maydis (c-1).
4. Rice blast – Pyricularia oryzae (= Magnaporthe oryzae) (d-4).

Short trick: Smut = Ustilago, Rust = Puccinia, Blast = Pyricularia, Root rot = Rhizoctonia.

Concept: Phytoalexins are low-molecular-weight antimicrobial secondary metabolites synthesised de novo by plants after infection or stress (Müller & Börger, 1940).

1. Examples: pisatin (pea), phaseollin (bean), rishitin (potato), camalexin (Arabidopsis), glyceollin (soybean).
2. They are not hormones, not synthetic, and not lectins (proteins).

Short trick: Phyto-alexin = plant 'warding-off' compound made after attack.

Concept: Both statements are reported facts.

1. Indian workers (NABI, Mohali; Kaur et al. 2018) edited banana cv. Rasthali with CRISPR/Cas9, knocking out the PDS gene – albino plants served as a visible marker.
2. About 20 viruses (e.g. BBTV, BSV, BBrMV, CMV) are known to infect banana worldwide; CRISPR has also been used to inactivate endogenous banana streak virus sequences.

Short trick: PDS knockout = albino = proof that CRISPR worked.