Which of the following is a zaid crop ?

Question

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Correct — A, Fodder. India's cropping calendar has three seasons, and zaid is the short one squeezed between them — the summer months from roughly March to June, after the rabi harvest is off the field and before the monsoon arrives to start the kharif sowing. Because there is no rain in that window, a zaid crop can only be grown where irrigation is available, and it has to be quick-maturing. The standard list of zaid crops given in the NCERT geography textbook is watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber, vegetables and fodder crops, and fodder is the only item on that list that appears among these four options. That is what makes it the answer: the other three are not merely less likely, they belong to the other two seasons outright. Gram and mustard are textbook rabi crops, sown from October to December on the residual soil moisture after the monsoon and harvested in spring; cotton is a long-duration kharif crop sown with the onset of the south-west monsoon. So the four options are one zaid, two rabi and one kharif, and a candidate who has the three seasonal lists straight can eliminate three of them in a few seconds. Be honest about the residual softness in this item, because it is real: 'fodder' is a use, not a single crop, and fodder maize, jowar, bajra and berseem are grown in several seasons. What justifies the answer is that fodder is the one option the standard zaid list names, while the other three are firmly and exclusively placed elsewhere.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Gram, or chana, is one of the four archetypal rabi crops alongside wheat, barley and mustard — sown October to December and harvested in spring. It is a pulse that thrives on cool weather and residual soil moisture, which is the opposite of what defines the hot, irrigated zaid window.  (c) Cotton is a kharif crop, sown with the onset of the south-west monsoon and among the longest in the field — it needs roughly six to eight months of warm weather and picking runs into the winter. Its long duration alone rules it out of a season that lasts about three months.  (d) Mustard is a rabi oilseed, sown with the winter crops and harvested before the summer heat. It is the most tempting wrong answer for anyone who links 'mustard' to spring, since the yellow mustard fields of north India flower in late winter — but flowering in February is a rabi crop finishing, not a zaid crop starting.

Concept: India's three cropping seasons are defined by the monsoon rather than by the calendar. KHARIF crops are sown with the arrival of the south-west monsoon in June and July and harvested in September and October — paddy, maize, jowar, bajra, tur, moong, urad, cotton, groundnut and soyabean. RABI crops are sown from October to December on the moisture the monsoon leaves behind and harvested from April to June — wheat, barley, peas, gram and mustard, and rabi is the season that gained most from the Green Revolution because it is the irrigated, fertiliser-responsive season in the north-western plains. ZAID is the short summer interval between the two, roughly March to June, when nothing will grow without irrigation and only quick-maturing crops fit: watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber, vegetables and fodder. Zaid is small in area but economically useful because it puts an otherwise idle field and an otherwise idle irrigation system to work, and because green fodder is scarcest in exactly these months, when pasture has dried out and the monsoon grass has not yet come.

State PCS 2024 Q79 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q79 — Geography PYQ with Answer