ASRB NET — Farm Machinery & Power / Land & Water Management Engineering / Agricultural Structures & Process Engineering · India · Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ICAR)
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersASRB NET — Farm Machinery & Power / Land & Water Management Engineering / Agricultural Structures & Process Engineering is a specialist certification exam run by Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ICAR), for candidates in India. NET: 150 MCQs, 150 marks, 2 hours, −1/3 per wrong answer, English/Hindi, PG level. Combined NET/ARS/SMS/STO recruitment runs prelims, mains and interview.
Official site: pw.live.
We have not been able to confirm these details against the exam body's own specification, so fees, dates and pass marks are left out on purpose. Check the current format, eligibility, fees and dates on the official site.
Similar to the ICAR PhD paper: concepts, standard design relations and their assumptions, with some numerical items on bunds, terraces, waterways and seepage.
Estimating erosion and designing the bunds, terraces, waterways, spillways, ponds and dams that control it.
Our 22 ASRB NET questions in this subject: 1 easy, 14 medium, 7 hard, across 12 units.
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
These 10 were written to ASRB NET and are not shown on any other exam's page.
On a hillslope segment where soil detached by rain and flow exceeds what the runoff can carry, erosion is:
D. transport-limited, and deposition occurs
When detachment supplies more sediment than the flow's transport capacity, the excess settles: the process is transport-limited. Detachment-limited conditions have spare transport capacity, so the flow can pick up more soil and there is no deposition.
As the drainage area of a watershed increases, its sediment delivery ratio generally:
A. decreases, because there are more opportunities for deposition
Larger watersheds have gentler average slopes, floodplains and more storage sites, so a smaller share of the eroded soil reaches the outlet. The relation is roughly a small negative power of area, with coefficients that vary by region.
Contour bunds are spaced at a vertical interval of 1.2 m. The design runoff is 12 cm. The depth of water impounded against each bund is closest to:
B. 0.54 m
h = √(Re × VI / 50) with Re in cm and VI in m: √(12 × 1.2/50) = √0.288 = 0.54 m. This comes from Re·HI = h²/(2s) and HI = VI/s. Using Re in metres inside the /50 form gives 0.054 m, and omitting the /50 gives √(12 × 1.2) = 3.79 m.
The formula h = √(Re·VI/50) for depth of water behind a contour bund assumes that the stored water forms:
C. a triangle upslope of the bund whose length is h divided by the land slope
Runoff from one metre of bund, Re × HI, is stored as a triangle of depth h at the bund and length h/s upslope: area h²/(2s). With HI = VI/s this gives h = √(2 Re VI), or √(Re VI /50) with Re in cm. The bund's own side slope is neglected.
The conservation bench terrace developed by Zingg and Hauser for semi-arid land works by:
C. draining runoff from a sloping contributing area onto a level bench below, where it is stored and cropped
Part of the land is left sloping as a runoff-producing area, and the level bench below receives that water, increasing the water available to the crop on the bench. It is a water-harvesting terrace for dry climates.
Manning's n for a grass-lined channel decreases as the product of velocity and hydraulic radius (VR) increases because:
D. deeper, faster flow bends the grass flat, reducing the flow resistance
Vegetal retardance curves show n falling with VR: at low VR the grass stands up and resists flow; at high VR it lies flat and acts like a smoother surface. The effect is strongest for tall retardance classes.
In a gully with a 6% bed slope, sediment trapped behind the dams settles at a stable slope of 2%. Allowing for this deposit slope, the spacing of 0.9 m effective-height check dams becomes:
A. 22.5 m
L = H/(S_g − S_c) = 0.9/(0.06 − 0.02) = 22.5 m. The deposit behind each dam rises at 2% towards the next dam, so fewer dams are needed than the head-to-toe spacing of 15 m. Adding the slopes gives 11.25 m and using only the deposit slope gives 45.0 m.
As the head on a drop-inlet (pipe) spillway rises from zero, the controlling flow regime changes in the order:
D. weir control, orifice control, full-flow pipe control
At low heads the riser crest acts as a weir; as it submerges the inlet acts as an orifice; at higher heads the conduit runs full and the whole pipe governs. At each head the smallest of the three capacities applies.
Soil at the downstream toe of a small dam has specific gravity 2.65 and void ratio 0.70. The exit gradient is 0.25. The factor of safety against piping (heave) is closest to:
D. 3.88
i_c = (G − 1)/(1 + e) = 1.65/1.70 = 0.971. FS = i_c / i_exit = 0.971/0.25 = 3.88. Quoting i_c alone gives 0.97, dividing by e instead of 1 + e gives 9.43, and inverting the ratio gives 0.26.
If soil transport by wind is taken as proportional to the cube of friction velocity, a 20% increase in friction velocity (above threshold) increases the transport rate by about:
B. 73%
Ratio = 1.2³ = 1.728, an increase of about 73%. The square law gives 44%; tripling the percentage (60%) is not the same as cubing the ratio. 20% assumes a linear law.
This plan follows where our questions actually fall, so the time goes where the marks are likely to be. It is our reading of the syllabus, not the exam body's weighting.
Read the manual chapters for these first and do every worked question you can find on them.
Aim for one sitting per unit, then mixed questions across them.
Learn the definitions, classifications and standard numbers; these units are more often recalled than worked.
Come back to these after a first pass, untimed, and read every explanation, including for the options you rejected.
Do these early in revision so they are fast on the day.
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