Q 01/05

Which simple sugar is a component of the antigens on red blood cells that determine your blood group?

A) Ribose

B) Galactose

C) Mannose

D) Arabinose

Answer · why

B) Galactose

It rarely occurs free in nature and is mostly met bound to glucose in milk sugar; on its own it is less sweet than glucose.

Q 02/05

Which two crops supply virtually all of the world's commercially refined sugar?

A) Corn and sorghum

B) Cane and beet

C) Cane and maple

D) Beet and date palm

Answer · why

B) Cane and beet

Cane accounts for about 79% of global sugar output; the two crops together weighed in at roughly two billion tonnes in 2016.

Q 03/05

Which country produces the largest share of the world's sugarcane, around 38-40% of the total?

A) India

B) Thailand

C) Brazil

D) China

Answer · why

C) Brazil

Sugarcane is the world's largest crop by tonnage, and much of the Brazilian harvest ends up as ethanol fuel rather than sugar.

Q 04/05

Sugarcane is a giant member of which plant family?

A) The legumes

B) The palms

C) The nightshades

D) The grasses

Answer · why

D) The grasses

It belongs to Poaceae alongside maize, wheat and rice, with jointed stalks up to 7 metres tall that store sucrose in their internodes.

Q 05/05

The main species of sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum, was first domesticated on which large island?

A) Borneo

B) Sri Lanka

C) Madagascar

D) New Guinea

Answer · why

D) New Guinea

Papuans began breeding it from wild Saccharum robustum around 4000 BC, and Austronesian voyagers later carried it across the Pacific as a canoe plant.