Ecosystem in the NEET Paper
Every question in this set is taken from an actual NEET paper, with its printed key and its printed option order. Where the scanned source was damaged, the text has been repaired to the reading the paper requires; one item, the productivity Match List, had two of its distractor strings reconstructed, and its explanation says so. Wording has been corrected only for grammar and spelling.
Read together, the papers show a settled pattern for this chapter.
Productivity and decomposition carry the largest share. The GPP - R = NPP identity has been examined repeatedly - once on the meaning of the symbol R, once on the relative sizes of GPP and NPP, and once through a definition deliberately attached to the wrong term. Decomposition is examined step by step, with fragmentation, leaching, catabolism, humification and mineralisation each having appeared as the answer to a step-identification question.
Units are examined directly. More than one paper has offered four unit expressions and asked which one of them is a productivity, so the dimensions of each quantity in this chapter are worth knowing as precisely as its definition.
Match List I with List II is now a standard format. Both 2026 papers used it for this chapter - once for productivity terms and once for decomposition terms - with four items on each side and four permutations offered as options.
Numerical work is confined to the ten per cent law. The arithmetic has stayed simple; what is tested is whether the number of energy transfers has been counted correctly.
Energy flow appears as a rule-checking format. Several items list three or four statements about unidirectional flow, the second law of thermodynamics, or the sun as the energy source, and ask which combination is correct.
Two items here sit outside the current syllabus. The 2021 question on standing state and the 2022 question on the phosphorus cycle belong to the nutrient-cycling material that was removed from the rationalised NCERT. They are kept because they are genuine past questions, and each explanation says so.