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

Question

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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 other options are wrong — (b) 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) 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) 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.

State PCS 2025 Q34 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q34 — Geography PYQ with Answer