SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 14 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 6 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.

Which plateaus are very fertile because they are rich in black soil that is very good for farming?

(a)Deccan lava plateau
(b)African plateau
(c)Ethiopian plateau
(d)Katanga plateau

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Deccan lava plateau rests on the Deccan Traps, sheet after sheet of basaltic lava poured out at the end of the Cretaceous.

Basalt weathers into black soil, called regur or black cotton soil. It is clayey, holds moisture, and carries iron, lime, magnesium and potash.

That pairing of a lava parent rock with a moisture-holding clay is exactly what the stem describes, and it is why the black-soil tracts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat carry cotton, jowar and pulses.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
African plateau — African plateau is a continent-scale label, not a soil region. It spans desert, savanna and rainforest on ancient crystalline rock, so no single soil type describes it.
(c)
Ethiopian plateau — The Ethiopian plateau is volcanic and fertile in parts, but the black soil the stem names is India's regur, the textbook weathering product of the Deccan Traps.
(d)
Katanga plateau — Katanga, in south-eastern DR Congo, is known for its copper and cobalt belt. Mineral wealth, not farm fertility, is what that plateau is remembered for.

Concept

Black soil, or regur, is a weathering product of basaltic lava rather than of river deposition.

It is fine and clayey, so it holds moisture through a dry season, swells when wet and cracks deeply when it dries. Those cracks are why it is called self-ploughing.

It is rich in iron, lime, magnesium, alumina and potash, and poor in nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter.

In India it covers the lava country of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, extending into parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Fertility here comes from the parent rock, not from fresh silt. That is the line separating black soil from the alluvial soils of the northern plains.

Key facts

Black soil, also called regur or black cotton soil, forms from the weathering of Deccan Trap basalt.
It retains moisture and cracks deeply on drying, which gives it the name self-ploughing soil.
It is rich in iron, lime, magnesium and potash and poor in nitrogen and organic matter.
Cotton is the crop most closely associated with it, hence the name black cotton soil.

Study next

Indian soil types compared - alluvial, black, red and laterite, with the crops each supportsThe Deccan Traps and the flood basalt eruptions at the close of the CretaceousThe cotton belt of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh

Common traps

Reading fertile as alluvial and reaching for a river-plain answer when the stem says black soil.
Treating African plateau as a definite region because the option sounds geographically precise.

SSC pairs a soil with its parent rock, its crop or its state. Store each soil in that three-part form and the question answers itself from whichever end it starts.

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