The lower Gangetic plain is characterized by a humid climate with high temperature throughout the year. Which one among the following pairs of crops is most suitable for this region?
Answer & explanation
Answer: (c) Paddy and Jute
Paddy and jute are water-loving tropical crops. They suit a hot, humid, high-rainfall region with fresh alluvium, such as the lower Gangetic plain (West Bengal). Wheat is a cool-season rabi crop, and cotton is a crop of semi-arid areas, so both are poor fits.
- ✗ (a) Paddy suits the region, but cotton is a tropical kharif crop of semi-arid areas. It is grown mainly on the black soils of the drier west and the Deccan, not in the humid, wet delta.
- ✗ (b) Jute fits, but wheat is a rabi crop. It needs the cool winter season, not high temperatures through the year.
- ✓ (c) Rice and jute are both water-intensive crops of wet, high-rainfall areas. Jute also needs high temperature while it grows, and fertile flood-plain soils renewed every year. The lower Ganga plain has all of these.
- ✗ (d) Neither wheat (cool rabi season) nor cotton (semi-arid tropics) suits a uniformly hot, humid, wet climate.
Remember · Jute and rice belong to the hot, humid, flood-plain alluvium of West Bengal and the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta. Wheat is a cool-season rabi crop. Cotton prefers semi-arid black soils.
📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 10 Contemporary India – II, Ch 4 (practise this chapter) · Class 12 India: People and Economy, Ch 3 (practise this chapter) · Class 12 India: People and Economy, Ch 3 (practise this chapter)
Sources
- NCERT Class 10 · Contemporary India – II, Chapter 4 “Jute grows well on well-drained fertile soils in the flood plains where soils are renewed every year. High temperature is required during the time of growth.”
- NCERT Class 12 · India: People and Economy, Chapter 3 “These areas grow various water intensive crops such as rice, jute and sugarcane and practise aquaculture in the fresh water bodies.”
- NCERT Class 12 · India: People and Economy, Chapter 3 “Cotton is a tropical crop grown in kharif season in semi-arid areas of the country.”
Question: UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) 2011, General Studies Paper I. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 25 Oct 2026 (how we verify). ·
