Which one of the following is correctly matched ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Kerala – Rubber. Kerala is India's natural rubber State: the great majority of the country's natural rubber comes from Kerala, overwhelmingly from the central Travancore belt around Kottayam, and the Rubber Board, the statutory body for the crop, is headquartered at Kottayam for exactly that reason. The pairing is not accidental — the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, needs high and well-distributed rainfall, a hot and humid climate with no cold season, and deep, well-drained laterite soils on gently sloping ground, which is a description of Kerala's midland belt. None of the other three pairs survives even a rough climatic test, so this is a one-answer question once you match each crop to the conditions it needs.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Jute is a crop of the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta and its neighbourhood — West Bengal above all, with Bihar, Assam and Odisha — because it needs heavy rainfall, high humidity and the annually renewed alluvium of a flood plain, plus running water for retting the stems. Uttar Pradesh's leading crops are sugarcane, wheat, rice and potato, not jute.  (b) Wheat is a rabi crop of the cool, dry winter of the north-west — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana are the leading States. Assam has a warm, extremely wet climate with no proper cold dry season, and its characteristic crops are rice and tea, not wheat.  (c) Tea needs heavy rainfall, high humidity and well-drained sloping land, so it is grown in Assam, West Bengal's Darjeeling and Dooars, the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, and Kerala's high ranges. Gujarat is a semi-arid State whose signature crops are cotton and groundnut; it grows no tea of any consequence.

Concept: Crop-to-State matching questions are really questions about climate and soil. Four conditions do most of the work. Rubber requires a hot, humid equatorial-type climate with heavy, well-distributed rainfall and deep laterite soils — hence Kerala, and then Tripura — the second-largest producer, where the rubber belt was built up deliberately from the 1960s — followed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and the rest of the north-east. Tea requires heavy rain, humidity and sloping ground so water does not stagnate at the roots — hence Assam, north Bengal, the Nilgiris and Kerala's high ranges. Jute requires the humid, flood-renewed alluvium of a delta plus water for retting — hence West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha. Wheat requires a cool growing season and a warm, dry ripening period — hence the north-western plains. Fix those four requirements and most matching questions on Indian crops answer themselves.

State PCS 2022 Q8 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q8 — Geography PYQ with Answer