Seed Banks and the Future of Food: Reading Answers & Explanations
IELTS Reading practice test · 14 questionsAcademicmedium
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About this passage
The passage opens: “Human beings have eaten perhaps six thousand plant species over the course of their history. Today just nine of them supply around two-thirds of the calories consumed worldwide, and wheat, rice and maize alone account for roughly forty per cent.”
- Passage length: about 842 words
- Questions: 14
- Question types: Matching Headings, Summary Completion, Matching Information, True / False / Not Given
“Seed Banks and the Future of Food” is an original IELTS-style practice passage written by IELTS-Bank. It is not taken from an official IELTS or Cambridge test, so these answers only apply to our version.
Answer key at a glance
Seed Banks and the Future of Food answers with explanations
Questions 1–6: Matching Headings
The reading passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix , for each paragraph.
- i. A collector whose work outlived him
- ii. The rising cost of running a laboratory
- iii. The seeds that cannot be frozen
- iv. The narrowing of the world's diet
- v. How farmers decide what to sell
- vi. Cold, dry and sealed: the standard method
- vii. Why a collection has to be opened
- viii. A store of last resort in the Arctic
- ix. Predicting the next crop disease
- 1
Paragraph A
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Answer: iv — The narrowing of the world's diet
Why: Paragraph A is about how nine crops now supply two-thirds of calories and how landraces were replaced by uniform varieties. That is the narrowing of the world's diet.
Where to find it · Paragraph A “Today just nine of them supply around two-thirds of the calories consumed worldwide, and wheat, rice and maize alone account for roughly forty per cent.”
- 2
Paragraph B
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Answer: i — A collector whose work outlived him
Why: Paragraph B describes Vavilov's expeditions and the collection that survived him after his death in prison, so the heading about a collector whose work outlived him fits.
- 3
Paragraph C
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Answer: vi — Cold, dry and sealed: the standard method
Why: Paragraph C sets out the standard storage routine: drying to about five per cent moisture, sealing in foil and freezing at minus eighteen degrees.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “They are sealed into foil packets and moved into a chamber held at minus eighteen degrees Celsius.”
- 4
Paragraph D
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Answer: viii — A store of last resort in the Arctic
Why: Paragraph D describes the Svalbard vault, built inside Arctic permafrost as insurance for other seed banks. It is a store of last resort.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, opened in 2008 on a Norwegian island about thirteen hundred kilometres from the North Pole, was built as insurance against exactly that.”
- 5
Paragraph E
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Answer: iii — The seeds that cannot be frozen
Why: Paragraph E is entirely about recalcitrant seeds, which are killed by drying and freezing and must be kept alive in other ways.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “The seeds of cocoa, avocado, mango, coconut and a great many tropical forest trees are what botanists call recalcitrant: they are shed with a high water content and are killed, rather than preserved, by drying and freezing.”
- 6
Paragraph F
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Answer: vii — Why a collection has to be opened
Why: Paragraph F argues that a bank's value lies in what leaves it, using the grassy stunt example, so the heading about opening a collection is correct.
Questions 7–9: Summary Completion
Complete the summary below.
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Storing seeds in a modern bank Before they go into storage, seeds are cleaned, checked and then dried until the (7) ______ inside them falls to about five per cent. They are sealed into (8) ______ packets and held at minus eighteen degrees Celsius, where some cereals will still be alive a century later. Samples are tested from time to time, and once the share of seeds that (9) ______ drops below a set level the whole sample has to be grown out again.
- 7
Gap 7(max 2 words)
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Answer: moisture (also accepted: the moisture / water)
Why: Paragraph C: samples are dried until the moisture inside the seed falls to roughly five per cent.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “Incoming samples are cleaned, checked for disease and then dried until the moisture inside the seed falls to roughly five per cent.”
- 8
Gap 8(max 2 words)
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Answer: foil (also accepted: foil packets)
Why: Paragraph C states that seeds are sealed into foil packets before being moved into the cold chamber.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “They are sealed into foil packets and moved into a chamber held at minus eighteen degrees Celsius.”
- 9
Gap 9(max 2 words)
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Answer: germinate (also accepted: germinates / germinate again)
Why: Paragraph C: once the proportion that germinates falls below a set threshold, the sample must be regenerated.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “Curators withdraw samples periodically and test them, and once the proportion that germinates falls below a set threshold the sample must be regenerated, grown out into fresh plants in isolation so that it does not cross with neighbouring varieties.”
Questions 10–11: Matching Information
Questions 10 and 11. The reading passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-F.
- A. Paragraph A
- B. Paragraph B
- C. Paragraph C
- D. Paragraph D
- E. Paragraph E
- F. Paragraph F
- 10
an example of people who protected seeds at the cost of their own lives
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Answer: Paragraph B
Why: Paragraph B says several researchers in Vavilov's institute starved to death during the siege rather than eat the seed store they guarded.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “During the wartime siege of the city, the researchers who remained in his institute guarded a store of edible seed through a winter of famine, and several of them starved to death rather than eat the collection they were protecting.”
- 11
a reference to plants whose seeds are destroyed by being dried
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Answer: Paragraph E
Why: Paragraph E explains that recalcitrant seeds such as cocoa and mango are killed, rather than preserved, by drying and freezing.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “The seeds of cocoa, avocado, mango, coconut and a great many tropical forest trees are what botanists call recalcitrant: they are shed with a high water content and are killed, rather than preserved, by drying and freezing.”
Questions 12–14: True / False / Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? Write TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.
- 12
Seeds have been taken out of the Svalbard vault and used to rebuild a collection elsewhere.
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Answer: TRUE
Why: Paragraph D describes the 2015 withdrawal by a centre forced out of Aleppo, which used the material to rebuild its collection in Lebanon and Morocco.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “The first withdrawal came in 2015, when a research centre forced out of Aleppo by the Syrian war requested its own material in order to rebuild its collection in Lebanon and Morocco.”
- 13
Wheat, rice and maize together provide more than half of the calories eaten worldwide.
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Answer: FALSE
Why: Paragraph A puts the figure for those three crops at roughly forty per cent; it is nine crops together that supply about two-thirds.
Where to find it · Paragraph A “Today just nine of them supply around two-thirds of the calories consumed worldwide, and wheat, rice and maize alone account for roughly forty per cent.”
- 14
Seed banks charge plant breeders a fee for each sample they supply.
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Answer: NOT GIVEN
Why: The passage discusses sharing rules and benefit-sharing agreements but says nothing about charges for individual samples.
Closest related text · Paragraph F “Stories of that kind depend on collections being catalogued, shared and, increasingly, sequenced, and on international rules governing who may take material and how any benefits return to the countries the seeds came from.”
Estimated band score for this test
Your raw score out of 14 scaled to the 40-question IELTS Reading (Academic) conversion table. This is the same estimate the practice page shows after you submit. A single passage is a small sample, so treat it as a guide.
| Correct answers | Estimated band |
|---|---|
| 14 / 14 | 9.0 |
| 13 / 14 | 8.5 |
| 12 / 14 | 7.5 |
| 11 / 14 | 7.0 |
| 10 / 14 | 6.5 |
| 8–9 / 14 | 6.0 |
| 7 / 14 | 5.5 |
| 6 / 14 | 5.0 |
| 5 / 14 | 4.5 |
| 4 / 14 | 4.0 |
| 3 / 14 | 3.5 |
| 2 / 14 | 3.0 |
| 1 / 14 | 2.0 |
| 0 / 14 | 0.0 |
Full-test score? Use the IELTS band calculator.
Tips for the question types in this test
Matching Headings
- Read the list of headings first so you know the options, and notice how they differ from one another — often two headings are deliberately similar.
- Read the first paragraph and ask yourself: "In one sentence, what is this paragraph mainly saying?" before you look back at the headings.
Common trap: Picking a heading because it repeats a word from the paragraph, when that word only appears in a minor detail.
Full Matching Headings strategySummary Completion
- Read the full summary first and identify which passage section it covers.
- Predict the grammar and meaning required in every blank.
Common trap: Choosing an option only because it repeats a passage word.
Full Summary Completion strategyMatching Information
- Read each statement and identify exactly what kind of information you are looking for — a reason, a result, an example, a definition, a contrast.
- Note that the statements do NOT follow paragraph order, so treat each one as an independent search.
Common trap: Assuming the questions run in order — they do not, which makes linear reading inefficient.
Full Matching Information strategyTrue / False / Not Given
- Read the statement first and underline the key idea, especially any qualifiers like "all", "only", "never", "always", "more than" or dates and numbers.
- Because the questions follow the order of the passage, scan for the paragraph that deals with the same topic rather than re-reading everything.
Common trap: Confusing "False" with "Not Given": choose False only when the passage actively contradicts the statement; if the passage is silent, it is Not Given.
Full True / False / Not Given strategyPractise “Seed Banks and the Future of Food” under exam conditions
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