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The next section that I chose was system physiology in plants followed by evolution and behaviour. System physiology in plants will take you not more than 4 days. Read this topic and underline the important lines. Make little notes beside the paragraphs so as to make a short summary like a flow chart or mind map or mnemonics. This will help you later on during revision. In case you know something more about a particular part, write it down on that page, so that when you revise it later, you also glance through it. Reading the chapter took me two days. I spent two more days to study Plant growth Hormones. I referred to this chapter from this UGC-CSIR book as well as my class 12^th textbook which had it in more detail. I made notes in a separate page of all the functions that I had come across for each hormone. You must learn the functions carefully as analytical questions from this section have a higher likelihood of being asked. Plant growth hormones is the most important chapter from this topic followed by translocation in plants; sensory photobiology; photosynthesis, respiration and photorespiration. Under the sub-topic nitrogen metabolism, please learn the examples of bacteria that convert ammonium ions to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. Questions pertaining to this have appeared in NET several times.

In evolution and behaviour, one can either skip this chapter or more preferably, as I would suggest, do smart study in this case. Focus on the various theories of organic evolution, their names and who proposed them and the ideology of that theory. You can remember them in your own words. It is important to know what it says so that you can make the closest possible guess at the time of the exam and mark it correctly. Another important part is the Oparin-Haldane theory. You should also know about the following –

• RNA world hypothesis
• Endosymbiotic theory
• Genome fusion hypothesis
• Endosymbionts that evolved to form mitochondria and chloroplast
• Coacervates
• Stromatolites
• Primordial soup
• Miller’s experiment

These are some of the fundamental things that an expert in biological science ought to know.

Learn the geological time scale. This is extremely important as questions do come from this section. Also refer to this table from NCERT textbooks. Remember the scientist who developed it – Giovani Avduina in 1760. Read all the other sub-topics from the book mentioned in my previous post (link has been provided above). Natural selection is a very important part. Know the types of natural selection and speciation. Questions from these topics are framed in a way such that we are required to identify the type of selection or speciation or vice-versa. So dwell on this topic very carefully.

You may leave out animal behaviour if you do not have a zoology background. I had only studied the different kinds of behaviour pattern and their examples and skimmed through territoriality, memory and communication. These are not very essential so you could do the same as I did.

You cannot go without preparing yourself for Population genetics. Read the chapter from Pierce Genetics Conceptual Approach, 4^th edition and solve each and every problem from this chapter in the textbook. Mark the important and tricky ones and look at them quickly before the exam for a final finesse in it. I referred to this textbook for this chapter in my M.Sc. So you can trust it.

The topics I have discussed in this blog post belong to zoology and botany mainly. So if you have specialized in these courses in B.Sc. or M.Sc. you will know better as to which books would be best for these topics. If you are reading this, I request you to let us also know about those books in the comments section. Also do tell us if they are easy enough to understand, do they explain things in a lucid language and would they be adequate to obtain sufficient knowledge in a short time frame.

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