BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims Q34: Bihar produces 71 percent of India's annual production of

Q: What is the answer to BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims Q34?

A. Correct — A, Lychee. Litchi is the one fruit in which Bihar does not merely lead India but dominates it, and it is the only option on this page for which a figure of the order of seventy per cent is even conceivable. The crop is concentrated in a compact belt of north Bihar — Muzaffarpur above all, with Vaishali, Samastipur, East and West Champaran and Begusarai around it — where the light alluvial soil of the Gandak and Burhi Gandak tract, high humidity and a short, sharp spring suit a fruit that is notoriously particular about climate. Muzaffarpur is the centre of the trade in every sense: the district alone carries a large share of the State's litchi area, its Shahi Litchi holds a Geographical Indication tag, and the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi, the country's dedicated institute for the crop, is located there. Reported figures for Bihar's share of national output vary between roughly forty and seventy-five per cent depending on the year and the source, so the stem's seventy-one per cent sits inside the range that is published rather than outside it — and, more to the point for a candidate, no other fruit on this list is anywhere near. Bihar is a significant mango producer but well behind Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh; its orange output is negligible against Maharashtra's; and it grows almost no pineapple. The wider Bihar horticulture picture is worth attaching to this answer, because BPSC asks it repeatedly: the State is also India's overwhelming producer of makhana, the fox nut of its northern wetlands, and a leading producer of vegetables, particularly potato, onion and brinjal.

BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 34 of 142

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer derived — no official key exists for this edition.

Answers derived, not from the official key. BPSC published an answer key for BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam at the time, but it is no longer available from the Commission or in any web archive. The answers here are our best-supported answers — solved from the question itself and cross-checked against primary sources — and each card says how certain it is. The question text is verbatim from the official booklet. These are not the Commission's answer key.

Question order, option order and answers follow the official BPSC Booklet Series I, paper code 01/BPP/GO/CC/PT-2025(Y).

Bihar produces 71 percent of India's annual production of which of these ?

(a)Lychee
(b)Mango
(c)Orange
(d)Pineapple

Answer

Why

Correct — A, Lychee. Litchi is the one fruit in which Bihar does not merely lead India but dominates it, and it is the only option on this page for which a figure of the order of seventy per cent is even conceivable. The crop is concentrated in a compact belt of north Bihar — Muzaffarpur above all, with Vaishali, Samastipur, East and West Champaran and Begusarai around it — where the light alluvial soil of the Gandak and Burhi Gandak tract, high humidity and a short, sharp spring suit a fruit that is notoriously particular about climate. Muzaffarpur is the centre of the trade in every sense: the district alone carries a large share of the State's litchi area, its Shahi Litchi holds a Geographical Indication tag, and the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi, the country's dedicated institute for the crop, is located there. Reported figures for Bihar's share of national output vary between roughly forty and seventy-five per cent depending on the year and the source, so the stem's seventy-one per cent sits inside the range that is published rather than outside it — and, more to the point for a candidate, no other fruit on this list is anywhere near. Bihar is a significant mango producer but well behind Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh; its orange output is negligible against Maharashtra's; and it grows almost no pineapple. The wider Bihar horticulture picture is worth attaching to this answer, because BPSC asks it repeatedly: the State is also India's overwhelming producer of makhana, the fox nut of its northern wetlands, and a leading producer of vegetables, particularly potato, onion and brinjal.

Why the others are wrong

(b)Mango — Bihar grows mango in quantity — the Jardalu of Bhagalpur even carries a Geographical Indication tag — but its share of the national crop is a single-digit percentage. Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are the largest producers, with Karnataka, Bihar, Gujarat and Telangana following, and no State comes close to seventy per cent of a fruit grown across the whole country.
(c)Orange — Citrus is not a Bihar crop of any significance. India's orange production is led by Maharashtra, around Nagpur, with Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab also substantial. The option is on the paper because oranges are a familiar fruit, not because Bihar has any claim to them.
(d)Pineapple — A crop of high-rainfall regions with acidic soils, grown mainly in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur and Kerala. Bihar's climate and soils are wrong for it and its output is negligible, which makes this the easiest of the three to eliminate once the growing conditions are considered.

Concept

Litchi, Litchi chinensis, is a subtropical evergreen of Chinese origin that is unusually demanding about where it will fruit well. It wants a frost-free winter cool enough to induce flowering, a warm humid spring, deep well-drained slightly acidic alluvium, and protection from hot dry winds during fruit development — a combination the north Bihar plain supplies and very few other parts of India do. The harvest window is correspondingly short, running through late May and June, and the fruit is highly perishable, which historically confined the trade to what could be moved quickly by rail. That perishability is why the crop matters to Bihar's policy debate as much as to its geography: cold storage, processing into pulp and juice, and air cargo links have all been pursued to widen the market beyond the fortnight in which the fresh fruit can be sold. Bihar's horticulture more broadly rests on the same alluvial advantage — litchi and mango in the north, makhana in the wetlands of Darbhanga, Madhubani, Katihar and Purnia, and vegetables across the State.

This question is answered by elimination against growing conditions rather than by recalling a statistic, and that is the durable skill. Ask where each fruit actually comes from. Oranges mean Nagpur and the Deccan; pineapples mean the high-rainfall north-east and Kerala; mangoes are grown almost everywhere in India, which by itself makes a seventy-one per cent share for any one State impossible. Only litchi is a crop with a genuinely narrow geography, and Bihar sits at the centre of it. The general rule behind that reasoning is worth stating plainly: a very high State share of national output is only possible for a crop with concentrated requirements — which is why Bihar can hold most of the country's litchi and makhana, why Kerala holds most of its black pepper and rubber, and why no State can hold most of its rice or mango. Treat any option naming a widely grown crop as suspect the moment a stem quotes a share above about half.

Key facts

Bihar's litchi belt runs across Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Samastipur, East and West Champaran and Begusarai, on the light alluvium of the Gandak and Burhi Gandak tract.
Muzaffarpur's Shahi Litchi holds a Geographical Indication tag, and the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi — India's dedicated institute for the crop — is located in the district.
Reported estimates of Bihar's share of India's litchi output range from roughly 40 to 75 per cent depending on the year and the source; the stem's 71 per cent falls within that range.
Bihar is also India's dominant producer of makhana, the fox nut grown in the wetlands of Darbhanga, Madhubani, Katihar and Purnia, and Bhagalpur's Jardalu mango carries its own GI tag.
India's mango output is led by Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh; oranges by Maharashtra around Nagpur; and pineapple by West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Kerala.

A 71 per cent share is only possible for a crop with a narrow geography — so check where each fruit grows, not the statistic

(a) Lychee — a genuinely concentrated crop→Bihar's litchi belt is compact: Muzaffarpur above all, with Vaishali, Samastipur, East and West Champaran and Begusarai, on the light alluvium of the Gandak and Burhi Gandak. Muzaffarpur's Shahi Litchi holds a Geographical Indication tag and the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi sits in the district. This is the answer.

(b) Mango — grown almost everywhere in India→Bihar grows it in quantity and Bhagalpur's Jardalu has a GI tag of its own, but its share of the national crop is single-digit. Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh lead. A fruit grown across the whole country cannot hand any one State seventy per cent of it.

(c) Orange — Nagpur and the Deccan→Citrus is not a Bihar crop of any significance. India's orange output is led by Maharashtra around Nagpur, with Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab substantial. The option is here because oranges are familiar, not because Bihar has a claim to them.

(d) Pineapple — high rainfall, acidic soils→Grown mainly in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur and Kerala. Bihar's climate and soils are wrong for it and its output is negligible — the easiest of the three to eliminate once growing conditions are considered.

The rule this question is really teaching→A very high State share of national output is possible only where a crop's requirements are concentrated — Bihar's litchi and makhana, Kerala's black pepper and rubber. No State holds most of India's rice or mango. Treat any widely grown crop as suspect the moment a stem quotes a share above about half.

Stated honestly: reported estimates of Bihar's share of national litchi output range from roughly 40 to 75 per cent depending on year and source, so the printed 71 per cent sits inside the published range — and no other fruit on the page is anywhere near.

Study next

Bihar's horticulture — litchi, mango, banana, makhana and vegetables, with the districts associated with eachGeographical Indication tags from Bihar: Shahi litchi of Muzaffarpur, Jardalu mango of Bhagalpur, Katarni rice, Magahi paan, Silao khaja, Bhagalpur Tussar silk, Mithila Makhana and Madhubani paintingLeading producer States for India's major fruits and plantation crops, and why some are concentrated and others are notAgricultural research institutions in Bihar — the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi at Muzaffarpur, ICAR-RCER at Patna and the Bihar Agricultural University at SabourPost-harvest management for perishables — cold chains, processing, and the market constraints that shape a short-season fruit like litchi

Common traps

Choosing mango because Bihar grows a lot of it. A crop grown across the whole country cannot give any single State a share of seventy per cent.
Treating a quoted percentage as verifiable to the decimal. Estimates of Bihar's litchi share differ widely between sources; what is stable is that Bihar dominates the crop.
Forgetting makhana. It is the other crop in which Bihar's national share is overwhelming, and it appears in BPSC papers as often as litchi does.

BPSC asks Bihar's agricultural and horticultural primacy directly, usually with a percentage attached and three widely grown fruits as distractors, and returns to the State's GI-tagged products in several forms. UPSC never asks a State's share of a fruit; it asks which State leads a crop nationally, or matches crops to their foremost producers, so the Bihar-specific detail is BPSC's own territory.

Related PYQs

UPSC_1998_GS1_Q901998Open & attempt →

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the codes given below the lists: List I (Agricultural products) I. Cotton II. Gram III. Black pepper IV. Pineapple List II (Foremost producer) A. Madhya Pradesh B. Gujarat C. West Bengal D. Kerala Codes:

(a) I-B, II-A, III-D, IV-C
(b) I-B, II-A, III-C, IV-D
(c) I-A, II-B, III-D, IV-C
(d) I-A, II-B, III-C, IV-D

Answer(a) I-B, II-A, III-D, IV-C

The crop-to-State map this question depends on, and it settles one of the distractors directly: pineapple's foremost producer is West Bengal, not Bihar. The same reasoning that pairs black pepper with Kerala — a crop with narrow climatic requirements concentrated in one State — is what makes litchi a Bihar crop.

BPSC_2024_PRE_PaperI_Q512024Open & attempt →

Match List – I with List – II : List – I a. Vaishali b. Bhagalpur c. Jamui d. Madhepura List – II 1. Silk Textile 2. Gold 3. Rail coach factory 4. Flori culture Select the correct answer using the codes given below. a b c d

(a) 3 4 1 2
(b) 2 3 4 1
(c) 1 2 3 4
(d) 4 1 2 3

Answer(d) 4 1 2 3

The 70th CCE paper of December 2024 tested the same district-to-product map that this question rests on — Vaishali with floriculture, Bhagalpur with silk. Vaishali is also part of the litchi belt, and a candidate who has built that map once can answer both questions from it.

BPSC_2025_PRE_PaperI_Q1102025Open & attempt →

The art of crafting which item in Meerut has received a GI tag?

(a) Sports Goods
(b) Musical Instruments
(c) Laddoo
(d) Scissors

Answer(d) Scissors

The 71st CCE shows how often Geographical Indications appear on these papers. Muzaffarpur's Shahi litchi is Bihar's entry in the same register, alongside Bhagalpur's Jardalu mango and Tussar silk, Katarni rice, Magahi paan and Mithila Makhana.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Geographical Indication tag for Shahi Litchi belongs to which district of Bihar ?
- (a)Bhagalpur
- (b)Muzaffarpur
- (c)Darbhanga
- (d)Nalanda
Answer(b) Muzaffarpur — the centre of Bihar's litchi belt and the home of the ICAR National Research Centre on Litchi. Bhagalpur's GI-tagged products are the Jardalu mango and Tussar silk.
practice — not a real PYQ
Bihar accounts for the overwhelming share of India's production of which of the following ?
- (a)Groundnut
- (b)Makhana (fox nut)
- (c)Coffee
- (d)Cotton
Answer(b) Makhana (fox nut) — grown in the ponds and wetlands of Darbhanga, Madhubani, Katihar and Purnia, and carrying a Geographical Indication as Mithila Makhana. Groundnut, coffee and cotton are all crops of other regions entirely.