Maize

Answer choices

1. A

   Reversed Causality1% picked this

   Maize’s impressive productivity cannot be understood without an understanding of its

   This is a strongly worded idea and it seems to reverse the idea in the 1st paragraph where the author says, "The primary reason for this plant's profound influence is its sheer productivity". That would suggest the author might say that, "Maize's profound cultural influence cannot be understood without an appreciation of its impressive productivity."

   1%
2. B

   Contradicted: oxygen not released6% picked this

   Maize is an example of a plant in which oxygen is not released as a

   We're told in the 2nd paragraph that, "all plants split water into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. They use the resultant hydrogen to form one of the molecules they need for energy, but the oxygen is released into the atmosphere." Maize is an example of a plant in which the oxygen released doesn't interact somewhat with rubisco.

   6%
3. C

   Out of Scope7% picked this

   Maize’s high yields are due not only to its use of C-4 but also to its ability to

   Out of Scope: large quantities of rubisco We're only told that C-4 plants have high yields because they keep the oxygen from competitively binding with the rubisco. We're never told that they produce an abnormally large quantity of rubisco.

   7%
4. D

   Out of Scope: lacked techniques2% picked this

   Until maize was introduced to Europeans by Native Americans, European populations lacked the agricultural techniques required for the

   We have no basis for saying that Europeans could cultivate C-4 plants. In fact, given that rice is a C-4 plant, our outside knowledge would probably suggest that Europeans were already cultivating rice before coming to North America. Maize might just have been a plant that was endemic to North America, so Europeans didn't grow it until they arrived in North America because they didn't have any contact with the plant / didn't have any seeds to plant, not because they didn't have techniques to grow it.

   2%
5. E

   Correct84% picked this

   Maize’s C-4 photosynthesis is an example of an effective evolutionary adaptation that has come

   Why this is right

   This is a good example of a correct answer that doesn't map to one particular support sentence, but is a very reasonable claim that our author would almost surely endorse. We know that the author thinks it's an effective evolutionary adaptation: Modern biochemistry has revealed the physical mechanism underlying maize's impressive productivity. That physical mechanism is an evolutionary adaptation, as the start of the final paragraph tells us: Some plants (C-4) have evolved a photosynthetic mechanism that prevents oxygen from impairing photosynthesis. And we know from the first few sentences of the passage that maize has benefited humans. .... leading to such developments as the adoption of agrarian and in some cases urban lifestyles, and much of the explosion of European populations after the fifteenth century was driven by the introduction of maize together with another crop from the Americas, potatoes.

   Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   84%