SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 9 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

In West Bengal, how many rice crops are grown in a year?

(a)Three
(b)One
(c)Two
(d)Four

Answer

Why

Correct — A. West Bengal grows three rice crops in a year, and each has a name: Aus, Aman and Boro.

Aus is the early autumn crop, Aman the main winter crop of the kharif season, and Boro the summer crop raised on irrigation rather than on rain.

NCERT records the same three-crop pattern for Assam and Odisha. Three is option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
One — One crop a year is the pattern where only the monsoon supports the field. Irrigation in West Bengal carries a summer crop as well, so the count is higher.
(c)
Two — Two is the near miss: it accounts for Aus and Aman and forgets Boro, the irrigated summer crop that makes the total three.
(d)
Four — Four overshoots. The standard scheme names three paddy seasons for these states, and there is no fourth named rice crop to add.

Concept

Rice is a kharif crop needing high temperature — above 25°C — high humidity and more than 100 cm of annual rainfall. Where rainfall falls short, irrigation stands in for it.

That last clause is why some states manage more than one crop a year. In West Bengal, Assam and Odisha, NCERT counts three: Aus, Aman and Boro.

The names are worth holding because the number and the names are asked interchangeably. West Bengal is also India's leading rice-producing state.

The question asks about rice specifically, not about total cropping intensity. A state can grow other crops in the gaps without adding to its count of paddy seasons.

Key facts

NCERT names three paddy crops a year in West Bengal, Assam and Odisha: Aus, Aman and Boro.
Aman is the winter kharif crop and the largest of the three in West Bengal.
Boro is the summer crop, grown with irrigation.
Rice needs temperatures above 25°C, high humidity and over 100 cm of annual rainfall, or irrigation in place of the rain.

Study next

Kharif, rabi and zaid seasons and the crops belonging to eachRice-growing regions of India and whether each depends on rainfall or irrigationCropping intensity and multiple cropping as measures of land use

Common traps

Answering two because kharif and rabi are the seasons that come to mind first.
Treating Boro as a rabi crop of some other grain. It is rice, grown in summer on irrigation.

Agricultural geography is lifted from the NCERT Class X chapter and asked either as a number, as here, or as the crop names themselves.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.