IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 39
IPMAT Indore 2022 previous year question on RC Structure and Organisation Questions, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
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.
Consider the following two Findings:
Non-climacteric fruits tend to have vivid colours.
Thirty-six varieties of climacteric and non-climacteric fruits were eaten predominantly either by ground-dwellers, or by arboreal or aerial animals respectively.
According to the passage,
- AFinding (i) provides main evidence and Finding (ii) provides supplementary evidence confirming the hypothesis of the biologists.
- BBoth Findings (i) and (ii) provide supplementary evidence confirming the hypothesis of the biologists.
- CBoth Findings (i) and (ii) provide main evidence confirming the hypothesis of the biologists.
- DFinding (i) provides supplementary evidence and Finding (ii) provides main evidence confirming the hypothesis of the biologists.
Answer & solution
Answer: Option D
Step 1 — identify each Finding in the passage.
Finding (ii) is the study itself, in paragraph 3:
“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.”
Note 15+21=36 — exactly the “thirty-six varieties” the Finding describes. This is the test the researchers designed, and paragraph 4 opens by calling it “a suggestively strong correlation.”
Finding (i) is the colour observation, in paragraph 4:
“And the authors’ hypothesis is fortified by other evidence. They point out that non-climacteric fruits tend to have vivid colours…”
Step 2 — read the passage’s own labelling. The phrase “fortified by other evidence” explicitly marks the colour point as additional support — i.e. supplementary — arriving after the main correlation has been reported.
So Finding (ii) is the main evidence and Finding (i) is supplementary.
Answer: Option 4
Shortcut. One phrase in paragraph 4 decides the whole question: “fortified by other evidence”. Whatever follows that phrase is supplementary by the passage’s own account — and what follows is the colour observation, Finding (i).
So (i) is supplementary, (ii) is main — option (d).
Two structural cues confirm it without any reading of content:
The designed study comes first and is called “suggestively strong”; the colour point comes second and is introduced as reinforcement.
The number 36 in Finding (ii) matches 15+21 from paragraph 3, tying it to the study proper.
All four options use the same two labels in different pairings, so the task is purely to rank the two pieces of evidence — do that from the connectives, not from the biology.
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