IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 34

IPMAT Indore 2022 previous year question on RC Main Idea Questions, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

RC Main Idea QuestionsReading Comprehension - Question TypesMultiple choiceMedium

RC passage 1: Passage 1 – Why some fruits keep ripening after picking — this question belongs to a set. Read the full set with all 6 questions →

Read the following passage and choose the answer that is closest to each of the questions that are based on the passage.

Bananas, apples, and avocados continue to ripen after they are picked. Cherries, blackberries, and grapes do not. The difference between climacteric fruits (the former) and non-climacteric fruits (the latter) matters to fruit growers and greengrocers, who must make sure their wares are in tip-top condition when they arrive at the marketplace. But how those differences originally came about remains unclear.

Two biologists of the University of Tokyo offer a suggestion. Fruits, they observe, exist to solve a problem faced by all plants-how best to spread their progeny around. Wrapping their seeds in a sugary pulp to provide a tasty meal serves as a way to get animals to do this for them. They do, however, need to make sure that their fruits favour the animals most likely to do the distributing. The biologists propose that climacterism, or its absence, is a way to achieve this. If ground-dwelling animals are the main distributors, then the continuing ripening of fallen fruit (i.e., climacterism) is beneficial. If, by contrast, those distributors are arboreal or aerial, and so can feed on unfallen fruit, then non-climacteric fruits will do well.

To test their idea, the two researchers studied 80 varieties of fruits, and noted which animals each depended on for its propagation. 35 of these fruits, eaten by both ground-dwelling animals and arboreal or aerial animals, were non-climacteric. Further, 15 of the 19 varieties eaten principally by ground-dwellers were climacteric, while 21 of the 26 fed on by arboreal or aerial animals were non-climacteric.

That is a suggestively strong correlation. And the authors’ hypothesis is fortified by other evidence. They point out that non-climacteric fruits tend to have vivid colours, especially reds and purples. This may help them to stand out amid the foliage of their parent plants, advertising their presence. Climacteric fruits are generally better camouflaged. That makes them harder to spot until they have fallen to the ground.

The main limitation of their work is that they looked at fruits eaten by people. This has probably contaminated the sample, for thousands of years of selective breeding for traits that human beings find appealing may have blurred any signal optimised by natural selection. The next step, therefore, should be the analysis of wild fruits.

The main point the writer makes is that fruit-bearing plants

A
of all kinds need to be studied, not just those consumed by humans.
B
and other plant species’ propagation cannot be studied accurately.
C
are better protected than other plant species and can propagate easily.
D
have the same problems in propagation as other plants.

Pick an option, then check.

Answer & solution

Answer: Option D

Where the passage says it. Paragraph 2 states the governing idea:

“Fruits, they observe, exist to solve a problem faced by all plants — how best to spread their progeny around.”

So fruit-bearing plants face the same propagation problem as every other plant; fruit is simply their particular solution to it. That is option (d).

Why the others fail:

(a) True as a recommendation, but it is the passage’s closing suggestion for future work (“The next step… should be the analysis of wild fruits”), not its main point. A final recommendation is not the thesis.

(b) Over-negative. The passage reports a study that did produce “a suggestively strong correlation”; it notes a limitation, it does not declare the subject unstudiable.

(c) Unsupported. Nothing claims fruit-bearing plants are better protected or propagate more easily — only that they recruit animals to do the distributing.

Answer: Option 4

Shortcut. Look for the sentence containing a universal quantifier. “A problem faced by all plants” is the writer framing fruit within a general botanical challenge — and only option (d) echoes that universality.

Option (a) is the designed trap, because it restates the passage’s genuine final sentence. A recommendation for further research is almost never the main point; it is what the passage arrives at after making its point. Ask instead what the passage spends its middle paragraphs establishing.

IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 34

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