With reference to ‘Brazil’ which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The equatorial rainforests of Brazil are called ‘Selvas’.
2. The dark black colour fertile land here is called ‘Terra R

Question

With reference to ‘Brazil’ which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. The equatorial rainforests of Brazil are called ‘Selvas’.
2. The dark black colour fertile land here is called ‘Terra Roxa’.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, both 1 and 2. Statement 1 is the standard regional-geography term. 'Selva' is simply the Spanish and Portuguese word for forest or jungle, and it is the name the equatorial rainforest of the Amazon basin carries in regional geography — the Amazon rainforest is Selva Amazónica in Spanish. Brazil holds the largest share of that forest, so calling Brazil's equatorial rainforests the Selvas is correct. Statement 2 is also correct. Terra roxa is the name of the deep, dark, exceptionally fertile soil of southern Brazil, found across Paraná and São Paulo, and it is the soil on which Brazil's coffee belt was built — the coffee that leaves through Santos, long nicknamed the coffee port of the world. One honest qualification worth carrying into the exam hall rather than out of it: 'roxa' is Portuguese for purple, and the soil is more precisely a very dark reddish-purple than a true black. The question's phrase 'dark black colour' is a description of how dark and rich the soil looks, not a colour specification, and it is exactly how Indian regional-geography texts render terra roxa — comparing it, quite reasonably, with India's own dark and highly fertile black cotton soil. On the substance the question is pointing at the right soil under the right name, and the commission's key marks both statements correct.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Rejects statement 1, but statement 1 is sound. The equatorial rainforest of the Amazon basin is the Selvas, from the Spanish and Portuguese word for forest; Spanish names the Amazon rainforest Selva Amazónica. Candidates hesitate here because 'Selvas' sounds like an obscure invented term, when it is simply the local word for the forest in the local language.  (c) Both statements are in fact correct, so this fails twice. It tempts anyone who has half-remembered that Amazonian soils are notoriously poor and leached and therefore assumes the whole soil statement must be wrong. That fact is true, but it is about the Amazon basin in the north; terra roxa is a different soil in a different part of the country, in the southern states of Paraná and São Paulo.  (d) Rejects statement 2, usually on the ground that the famous fertile soil of Brazil is 'red', not 'black'. But terra roxa is precisely Brazil's dark, deeply fertile agricultural soil — the coffee soil of Paraná and São Paulo — and 'dark black colour fertile land' is how Indian geography texts describe it. Rejecting the statement on a shade of colour discards the only soil in Brazil that the description can possibly mean.

Concept: Regional geography gives the same physical feature different names in different parts of the world, and examiners love the resulting vocabulary. Brazil supplies two of the most-asked terms. The Selvas are the equatorial rainforest of the Amazon basin — hot and wet all year, with afternoon convectional thunderstorms, and a multi-storeyed structure of emergents, a closed canopy, sparse undergrowth, lianas and epiphytes. Terra roxa is something quite different and quite far south: the deep, dark, remarkably fertile soil of Paraná and São Paulo, classically described as the product of weathered volcanic rock, on which Brazil's coffee economy was built. The two belong to different parts of the country and should never be run together.

State PCS 2025 Q112 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q112 — Geography PYQ with Answer