BharatNotes Biomass
noun (often used attributively, as in "biomass energy")Usage in a UPSC answer
As India pursues its net-zero commitment, harnessing agricultural biomass for decentralised power generation offers a twin dividend: it curbs the stubble-burning that chokes north Indian cities each winter, while providing farmers a supplementary income stream from what was once treated as waste.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Word Family
biomass (n), biomasses (n pl), bioenergy (n), biomaterial (n), biofuel (n)
Root
Greek bios = life; bio- = life-prefix; Latin massa = lump, quantity; first recorded 1930s
Etymology
From bio- (from Greek bios, life) + mass (from Latin massa, lump or quantity); first recorded in the 1930s.
Memory Hook
Break it as BIO + MASS — a "mass of life": all the living (or once-living) stuff you can burn for green energy or weigh in an ecosystem.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
The word carries two senses that examiners test separately. In ecology, biomass is the total dry weight of living material in a given area or at a given trophic level, and it underpins the pyramid of biomass, which is normally upright on land but inverted in many aquatic systems where a small standing crop of rapidly reproducing phytoplankton supports a larger mass of consumers. That inversion is the standard trap, and the resolution is that a pyramid of energy can never be inverted, since energy transfer between trophic levels is roughly ten per cent and loss is unavoidable. In the energy sense, biomass is organic matter used as fuel, and its policy attraction in India is that converting crop residue into power or compressed biogas addresses stubble burning and farm income together, treating as a resource what is otherwise burnt in the field.
Don’t Confuse It With
Biomass in ecology is the dry weight of living matter present, a stock measured at a moment. Productivity is the rate at which that matter is generated, a flow measured over time, so a low standing biomass can have very high productivity. A pyramid of biomass can be inverted while a pyramid of energy never can. In the fuel sense, biomass is renewable organic feedstock, distinct from fossil fuel, which is organic in origin but not renewable on any human timescale.
Hindi Meaning
जैवभार (jaivbhār) or बायोमास.
Common Questions
- What is biomass in ecology?
- The total dry weight of living organisms present in a given area or at a particular trophic level at a point in time.
- Why can a pyramid of biomass be inverted?
- Because in aquatic systems a small, fast-reproducing mass of phytoplankton can support a larger standing mass of consumers, though the pyramid of energy still cannot be inverted.
Seen in UPSC Question Papers
- Prelims 2024 — Physics/Energy
- Prelims 2024 — IT & Cyber
- Prelims 2021 — Biodiversity
- Prelims 2021 — Ecology
- Prelims 2016 — Ecology
Real UPSC previous-year questions whose text uses “Biomass” — proof this word earns its place on your list.
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