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UPSC Prelims 2025 CSAT, question 52

Topic: Reading comprehension

Directions · Q51 to Q54

Directions for the following 4 (four) items :
Read the following two passages and answer the items that follow the passages. Your answer to these items should be based on the passages only.

Passage · Q51 to Q52

It is hard to predict how changes in the climate and the atmosphere's chemistry will affect the prevalence and virulence of agricultural diseases. But there is a risk that such changes will make some plant infections more common in all climatic zones, perhaps catastrophically so. Part of the problem is that centuries of selective breeding have refined the genomes of most high-value crops. They are spectacular at growing in today's conditions but genetic variations that are not immediately useful to them have been bred out. This is good for yields but bad for coping with changes. A minor disease or even an unknown one could suddenly rampage through a genetically honed crop.

Q52

With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made :

I. Global climate change can result in the migration of several plant diseases to new areas.

II. Scientific understanding of the wild relatives of our present crops would enable us to strengthen food security.

Which of the above assumptions is/are valid ?

  1. (a) I only
  2. (b) II only
  3. (c) Both I and IICorrect answer
  4. (d) Neither I nor II

Solution.

Answer: (c) Both I and II

  1. Statement I is correct: the passage says changes in climate and atmospheric chemistry may make some plant infections more common in all climatic zones, which assumes diseases can spread to new areas.
  2. Statement II is correct: the passage blames the loss of genetic variation bred out of high-value crops, which assumes that understanding the varieties that still carry it (the crops' wild relatives) would help protect food supply.

Trap: The passage never names wild relatives, but the remedy for genetic variation that has been bred out is to look where it survives.