Question

Study and cultivation of vegetables is known as
a) Agriculture
b) Horticulture
c) Apiculture
d) Olericulture

Answer 1

Hint: Botany is a subdivision of biology that deals with the study of different plants and their cultivation.

Complete answer:
To solve this question, we must understand the meaning of all terms to find the right answer.
Agriculture is a wide branch of botany that deals with cultivation of different crops and rearing of animals. It’s a science of growing food crops. It is a commercial process and is the main occupation of many people in rural communities. The crops grown are those for human consumption. Agriculture is a science because it involves a step-by-step process of growing crops, maintaining and harvesting them. Present day agriculture makes use of recombinant DNA technology to fasten and better the process. Agriculture has a branch named horticulture.
Horticulture is a branch of agriculture. It’s a process of cultivating plants using special techniques. It involves cultivation, breeding, researching about plants, plant propagation, trends in biochemistry and genetic engineering to cultivate plants. The main difference between horticulture and agriculture is that agriculture involves crops for human consumption whereas horticulture involves all plants which may not be for human consumption.
Apiculture is another branch of agriculture that is commercially oriented and serves as occupation. Apiculture or bee-keeping deals with artificial rearing of honey bees to obtain products such as honey, bee venom, wax and royal jelly for crop pollination. Bee-keeping has been an age-old industry. The importance of apiculture is due to honey. Honey is a food of high nutritive value and also finds its use in medicine.
Olericulture is a branch of horticulture. The word olericulture is derived from Latin words ‘olerus’ which means pot herbs and ‘cultura’ which means cultivation. It’s a science of cultivating vegetables. Vegetables are actually the edible parts of the herbaceous plant. It deals with cultivation, production, storage and processing and marketing of vegetables.

> Thus the correct answer is option D- Olericulture.

Note: Horticulture and apiculture are branches of agriculture. Horticulture has many branches like olericulture, pomology, floriculture, etc.