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READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

A brome lives on: How a British grass escaped extinction

An inconspicuous grass, 'interrupted brome', once thought extinct, is being reintroduced into fields. Called interrupted brome because of the widely spaced seeds on its seedhead, this undistinguished British grass was found nowhere else in the world. Sharp-eyed botanists of the Victorian era were the first to notice it and by the 1920s the odd-looking grass had been found across much of southern England.

But its decline was dramatic. By 1972 it had vanished from its last toehold – two hay fields at Pampisford, near Cambridge. Even the seeds stored at the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens as an insurance policy were dead, having been mistakenly kept at room temperature. Botanists mourned: a unique living entity was, it seemed, gone forever. But one green-fingered botanist prevented its complete demise.

At first, Philip Smith was unaware that the scrawny pots of grass on his bench were all that remained of a uniquely British species. But when news of the 'extinction' of interrupted brome finally reached him, he decided to astonish his colleagues at a meeting of the Botanical Society in Manchester in 1979, where he was booked to talk about his research on the evolution of the brome grasses. He pretended to believe that interrupted brome was extinct and then he suddenly produced two enormous pots of it. Smith, who runs the school of plant sciences at the University of Edinburgh, had collected seeds at Pampisford in 1963, shortly before the species disappeared from the wild altogether. Ever since then, Smith had grown the grass year after year. So the hapless grass survived not through some conservation scheme or genetic manipulation, but simply because one man was interested in it. As Smith points out, interrupted brome is not particularly attractive and has no commercial value. But to a plant taxonomist, that is not what makes a plant interesting.

Interrupted brome could yet reveal how new species arise, and how they adapt to different types of farming. Crop breeders interested in improving commercial strains of crops, as well as conservationists interested in maintaining the gene pool, should celebrate the plant's survival, as genetic studies could show how a sudden simple mutation* might generate an entirely new species. Such a 'mistake' of nature might point the way to key genes that control reproduction in grasses. Seeds from Smith's plants have been securely stored in the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex. And living plants thrive at the botanical gardens at Kew, Edinburgh and Cambridge.

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The brome's relaunch into the British countryside is next on the agenda. The conservation organisation, English Nature, has included interrupted brome in its Species Recovery Programme, and it is on track to be reintroduced into the agricultural landscape, if friendly farmers can be found. Alas, the grass is neither pretty nor useful. As a grass, it leaves agriculturalists cold.

So where did it come from? Smith's research into the taxonomy of the brome grasses suggests that interrupted brome almost certainly mutated from another weedy grass, 'soft brome'. So close is the relationship that interrupted brome was originally deemed to be a mere variety of soft brome by the great Victorian taxonomist Professor Hackel. But in 1895, George Claridge Druce, an Oxford pharmacist with a shop in the High Street, decided that it deserved species status, and convinced the botanical world of it.

The brome's parentage may be clear but the timing of its birth is more obscure. A clue lies in its need to grow as a weed in fields sown with an animal feed crop – particularly legumes such as sainfoin, lucerne or clover, which have the additional benefit of enriching the soil. According to agricultural historian Joan Thirsk, these legumes appeared in Britain in the early 1600s. Seeds brought in from Europe were sown in pastures to feed livestock.

By 1650 these legumes were increasingly used for their soil-enriching qualities, serving as 'green manure' to boost grain yields. A bestseller of its day, Nathaniel Fiennes's Sainfoin Improved, published in 1671, helped to spread the word. The arrival of sainfoin, clover and lucerne set the scene for the spontaneous emergence of Britain's very own rogue grass.

Although the credit for the 'discovery' of interrupted brome goes to a Miss A. M. Barnard, who collected specimens at Odsey, Bedfordshire, in 1849, the grass had probably lurked undetected in the English countryside for at least a hundred years. Smith thinks it probably evolved in the late 17th or early 18th century, once sainfoin became established. The brome's fortunes declined dramatically over the 20th century, not least because the advent of the motor car destroyed the market for fodder crops for horses. Today, sainfoin has all but disappeared from the countryside, though you can sometimes spot its pretty pink flowers. These days, artificial fertilisers have made the soil-enriching properties of legumes redundant. >> 🔥 Nhắn zalo 0905834420 join group zalo Hóng đề thi máy 4 skills để cập nhật đề thi thật 4 kĩ năng hằng ngày [Kèm giải & đề làm online]

The intimate relationship with out-of-fashion crops spells trouble for anyone keen to re-establish interrupted brome in today's countryside. Its seeds cannot survive long in the soil. Each spring, the brome relied on farmers to re-sow its seeds with their animal feed crops; in the days before weedkillers and sophisticated seed sieves, an ample supply would always have been present in stocks of crop seed. Interrupted brome's reluctance to spread by itself could have advantages, however. Any farmer willing to foster this unique contribution to the world's flora can rest assured that the grass will never become an invasive pest.

mutation: a change in the genes of a cell which may affect the structure and development of the resultant offspring

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this >> 🔥 IELTS TUTOR gợi ý tham khảo CẦN VIẾT & THU ÂM BAO NHIÊU BÀI ĐỂ ĐẠT 8.0 SPEAKING & 7.0 WRITING?

1. Interrupted brome got its name because it came close to extinction.

2. Interrupted brome seeds died because they were stored at room temperature.

3. Philip Smith studied at the University of Manchester.

4. English Nature operates from Kew Botanical Gardens.

5. Interrupted brome grows poorly near plants such as sainfoin.

6. Legumes were used both as stock feed and for soil improvement.

7. Interrupted brome needs to be harvested and re-sown to survive.

8. Only modern weedkillers prevent interrupted brome becoming an invasive pest.

1. FALSE
2. TRUE
3. NOT GIVEN
4. NOT GIVEN
5. FALSE
6. TRUE
7. TRUE
8. FALSE

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