Reading Lab

IELTS Academic Reading Practice Pack 35

A premium Academic Reading set on climate-resilient crop diversity, repairable electronics, and wildfire smoke as a distributed public-health risk.

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Time allowed

60 min

Passages

academicreadingfull mockagriculturecircular electronicswildfire smoketfngynngqa candidate

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Passage 1

Crop Diversity After Climate Certainty Has Disappeared

Why climate-resilient agriculture depends on crop diversity, but also on institutions that can move genetic resources from collections into actual farming decisions.

A.A. Climate adaptation in agriculture is often discussed as if the problem were simply to find better seeds. In reality, the question is broader and more demanding. Farmers facing erratic rainfall, heat stress, new pest pressures, and changing seasons do not need diversity in the abstract. They need access to crop traits, varieties, and cultivation systems that can perform under uncertainty without making livelihoods more fragile. This is why crop diversity has returned to policy debates with unusual force. It is being treated not merely as a conservation good, but as a practical hedge against narrowing climatic reliability.

B.B. Diversity matters because climatic stress is not uniform. A variety that withstands drought may still perform poorly under heat at flowering, while one crop that survives flooding may fail where labour demand or market timing is unfavourable. The common policy temptation is to search for a single climate-ready winner. That impulse is understandable, but it is also risky. Farming systems become more brittle when adaptation is concentrated in too few options. Diversity spreads agronomic risk not by guaranteeing success everywhere, but by reducing dependence on one narrow pathway.

C.C. Genebanks are often presented as the institutional answer to this problem. They hold enormous collections of seeds and breeding material that might contain valuable traits for future stress conditions. Yet storage is not the same as adaptation. Genetic resources only become socially useful when they are characterised, prioritised, tested, bred into accessible varieties, and matched to real farming systems. A vault can preserve possibility, but it cannot on its own deliver resilience into a field. The translation from conserved material to cultivated adaptation requires long chains of research, finance, extension, and seed distribution.

D.D. This translation is politically uneven. Wealthier research systems can screen more material, run more trials, and move promising lines through breeding pipelines faster. Regions facing acute climate exposure may therefore depend on diversity held globally while lacking the institutional capacity to evaluate and deploy it at speed. The result is a paradox: climate risk increases the value of crop diversity precisely where the infrastructure needed to use that diversity may be weakest. Adaptation then becomes a question not only of biological availability but of scientific and administrative reach.

E.E. The problem is not solved simply by introducing so-called new crops. Some commentators celebrate neglected or orphan crops as obvious substitutes for climate-stressed staples, and in some places that is a serious possibility. But adoption depends on cooking practices, storage, taste, labour patterns, input access, and market demand as much as on stress tolerance. A crop can be agronomically promising and still remain marginal if it does not fit the wider social economy of farming and food. Here again, adaptation fails when technical potential is mistaken for automatic uptake.

F.F. Breeding priorities also reveal a tension between yield maximisation and resilience. Under stable conditions, selecting for peak performance can make economic sense. Under unstable conditions, varieties that perform slightly less spectacularly in ideal years may become more valuable if they fail less dramatically in bad ones. This is not a romantic argument against productivity. It is an argument for judging performance differently when climatic variance becomes a normal feature of agriculture rather than an occasional shock.

G.G. Crop diversity therefore matters less as a museum principle than as a system of options that must be kept mobile between conservation, research, and farming. What deserves attention is not only how much diversity exists, but who can reach it, interpret it, and afford to use it. The politics of adaptation lies in that movement. Once climate uncertainty becomes ordinary, resilience depends on whether diversity remains locked in collections and reports or circulates into the practical decisions of people growing food under pressure.

H.H. That is why recent debates increasingly connect crop diversity to public investment strategy. Funding a collection is one task; funding the evaluation, breeding, and local delivery systems that make stored diversity actionable is another. Where those downstream steps are weak, diversity can become a symbolic reassurance rather than an operational resource. The harder but more honest question is whether institutions are built to turn biological possibility into routine adaptation before climatic disruption makes delayed action unaffordable. That timing question is increasingly central.

Matching Headings

Questions 1-5

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below.

Write the correct Roman numeral, i-viii, in boxes 1-5.

1. Paragraph B

i. Why stored diversity is not the same as usable resilience
ii. A warning against searching for one universal climate solution
iii. When stress-tolerant crops fail socially rather than biologically
iv. Why capacity gaps shape who can use global diversity fastest
v. A defence of maximum yield under unstable climates
vi. Why performance standards change when bad years become normal
vii. The claim that orphan crops can replace staples everywhere
viii. A reminder that agronomic risk is distributed unevenly

2. Paragraph C

i. Why stored diversity is not the same as usable resilience
ii. A warning against searching for one universal climate solution
iii. When stress-tolerant crops fail socially rather than biologically
iv. Why capacity gaps shape who can use global diversity fastest
v. A defence of maximum yield under unstable climates
vi. Why performance standards change when bad years become normal
vii. The claim that orphan crops can replace staples everywhere
viii. A reminder that agronomic risk is distributed unevenly

3. Paragraph D

i. Why stored diversity is not the same as usable resilience
ii. A warning against searching for one universal climate solution
iii. When stress-tolerant crops fail socially rather than biologically
iv. Why capacity gaps shape who can use global diversity fastest
v. A defence of maximum yield under unstable climates
vi. Why performance standards change when bad years become normal
vii. The claim that orphan crops can replace staples everywhere
viii. A reminder that agronomic risk is distributed unevenly

4. Paragraph E

i. Why stored diversity is not the same as usable resilience
ii. A warning against searching for one universal climate solution
iii. When stress-tolerant crops fail socially rather than biologically
iv. Why capacity gaps shape who can use global diversity fastest
v. A defence of maximum yield under unstable climates
vi. Why performance standards change when bad years become normal
vii. The claim that orphan crops can replace staples everywhere
viii. A reminder that agronomic risk is distributed unevenly

5. Paragraph F

i. Why stored diversity is not the same as usable resilience
ii. A warning against searching for one universal climate solution
iii. When stress-tolerant crops fail socially rather than biologically
iv. Why capacity gaps shape who can use global diversity fastest
v. A defence of maximum yield under unstable climates
vi. Why performance standards change when bad years become normal
vii. The claim that orphan crops can replace staples everywhere
viii. A reminder that agronomic risk is distributed unevenly

True/False/Not Given

Questions 6-9

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

In boxes 6-9, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information, FALSE if the statement contradicts the information, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

6. The passage says climate adaptation in farming can be solved simply by identifying better seeds.

7. According to the writer, crop diversity can reduce dependence on a single adaptation pathway.

8. The writer claims all neglected crops are already acceptable to consumers once they are shown to be climate-tolerant.

9. The passage provides a universal yield threshold below which resilient varieties should never be adopted.

Sentence Completion

Questions 10-13

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

10. Genebanks preserve ______, but they do not deliver resilience by themselves.

11. Some regions face severe climate exposure but limited institutional ______ to deploy diversity quickly.

12. A crop may be agronomically promising yet remain ______ in actual food systems.

13. The final paragraph warns that stored diversity can become a symbolic ______ if delivery systems are weak.

Passage 2

Repairable Electronics and the Politics of Product Lifespan

Why making electronics more repairable depends on design choices, spare parts, business models, and regulation rather than on technical possibility alone.

A.A. The environmental problem of consumer electronics is often described through extraction and disposal: minerals enter factories, devices enter homes, and waste enters landfills or informal recycling flows. Increasingly, however, policy debates focus on a quieter stage in the middle: product lifespan. If devices could be repaired more easily, updated for longer, and disassembled with less damage, fewer products would need to be replaced as quickly. This is the logic behind the repair economy. Yet turning that logic into ordinary practice has proved more difficult than public sympathy for the idea might suggest.

B.B. Design is central. A device glued shut, dependent on proprietary screws, or built around components that are difficult to remove without damaging adjacent parts is not merely inconvenient to repair; it is politically coded toward replacement. Manufacturers often defend such choices through performance, thinness, waterproofing, or safety. Sometimes those claims are valid. But design decisions also embed assumptions about who is expected to intervene after purchase: the owner, an independent repairer, an authorised service centre, or no one at all. Repairability is therefore a product of technical architecture and institutional permission simultaneously.

C.C. Spare parts create another bottleneck. Even a repairable product in principle becomes effectively disposable if key parts are unavailable, locked behind restrictive channels, or priced close to the cost of replacement. Diagnostic software and firmware pairing can produce similar outcomes. A phone screen or battery may be physically interchangeable yet operationally constrained if devices reject non-authorised components or disable functions after replacement. In such cases, the obstacle to repair is not mechanical difficulty alone but control over post-sale access.

D.D. Supporters of stronger repair rights often argue that longer product life reduces waste and lowers costs for households. Critics respond that mandatory design changes, longer support obligations, and parts availability can raise prices or slow innovation. The more serious version of this disagreement is not whether trade-offs exist, but how they are distributed. A market that rewards frequent upgrading may look innovative while shifting environmental and financial costs outward to users and waste systems. Repair policy asks whether some of those costs should be brought back into product design and producer responsibility.

E.E. Regulation has therefore moved beyond simple consumer advice. Some jurisdictions now require spare-parts availability, software support for defined periods, repair scores, or design-for-disassembly criteria. These rules do not guarantee a thriving repair economy, but they alter the baseline. They make longevity and serviceability legible in markets that long treated replacement as the default rhythm. The strongest policies also recognise that repair is labour. Without trained technicians, accessible manuals, and local business viability, a right to repair can remain formal rather than practical.

F.F. There is, however, a limit to repair as a universal answer. Some products become obsolete because of security demands, incompatible networks, or broader system shifts that no screwdriver can solve. Others may be technically repairable yet inefficient to keep in service if energy use, safety, or repeated failure make continued operation unattractive. Repair politics becomes weakest when it promises immortality for all devices. Its stronger claim is narrower: more products should be repairable than currently are, and the decision to replace should more often follow genuine decline rather than engineered inconvenience.

G.G. Seen this way, the repair economy is not nostalgic resistance to progress. It is a contest over what kind of progress is being optimised. Fast product cycles can produce impressive technical novelty, but they can also institutionalise waste as a business model. Repair policy does not deny the value of innovation. It asks whether innovation can be judged partly by how well products remain usable, maintainable, and supportable after sale. That is a harder standard, and precisely for that reason it matters.

H.H. The practical frontier now lies in aligning design, software policy, parts supply, and local service ecosystems. Where those pieces connect, repair becomes mundane rather than ideological. Where they do not, circularity remains a slogan attached to products whose most sustainable feature is still being replaced later than before, not being designed to stay in use much longer. The difference between those two outcomes is the real measure of repair ambition. It is also what separates symbolic consumer choice from structural change in product markets.

Matching Information

Questions 14-17

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-17.

You may use any letter more than once.

14. a statement that some apparently technical design choices also communicate who is permitted to intervene after purchase

15. a warning that formal legal rights can remain weak without viable labour and service capacity

16. a claim that replacement should follow real decline rather than avoidable inconvenience

17. an argument that circularity can remain rhetorical if product ecosystems remain poorly aligned

Matching Features

Questions 18-21

Look at the following features (Questions 18-21) and the list of elements below.

Match each feature with the correct element, A-D.

Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 18-21.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

18. may be used to make longevity more visible at the point of sale

A. product design
B. spare-parts and software access
C. regulation
D. local repair labour

19. can make a product effectively disposable even when it is mechanically serviceable

A. product design
B. spare-parts and software access
C. regulation
D. local repair labour

20. helps determine whether a right to repair is practical rather than symbolic

A. product design
B. spare-parts and software access
C. regulation
D. local repair labour

21. may encode replacement-oriented assumptions through adhesives and closed assembly

A. product design
B. spare-parts and software access
C. regulation
D. local repair labour

Multiple Choice

Questions 22-24

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

22. What is the writer’s main point in paragraph C?

23. According to the passage, what is the stronger version of the disagreement around repair policy?

24. What best captures the writer’s overall position?

Summary Completion

Questions 25-27

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

25. The repair economy focuses on product ______ rather than only extraction and disposal.

26. A product may be physically repairable but blocked by restrictive ______ access.

27. The writer argues that circularity remains weak when repair ecosystems are poorly ______.

Passage 3

Wildfire Smoke and the Expansion of Distant Risk

How wildfire smoke has become a long-range public-health problem whose impacts depend on exposure, forecasting, infrastructure, and institutional response.

A.A. Wildfire is often imagined as a local disaster defined by flames, evacuation lines, and charred landscapes. Smoke changes that geography. It carries combustion risk far beyond the burn zone, exposing urban populations, rural communities, transport systems, schools, hospitals, and energy networks at great distance from the original fire. This is why wildfire smoke is increasingly understood not merely as a by-product of fire, but as a distributed public-health event whose footprint can be broader than the area actually burned.

B.B. The epidemiological concern is not confined to a single pathway. Smoke carries fine particulate matter and other compounds that affect respiratory and cardiovascular systems, and repeated exposure can burden populations already shaped by age, illness, work conditions, and unequal housing quality. Public messaging sometimes struggles here. People assume that danger is highest nearest the flames, yet smoke plumes can create severe exposure far away when atmospheric conditions align. Distance from fire is therefore a poor substitute for exposure itself.

C.C. Forecasting has improved, but it remains probabilistic rather than omniscient. Smoke models now combine meteorology, satellite observations, fire behaviour, and atmospheric chemistry in ways that were impossible only a few years ago. Even so, forecasts can struggle with rapid shifts in wind, ignition patterns, or plume structure. This matters institutionally because authorities use smoke outlooks to decide whether to close schools, issue work guidance, protect clinical populations, or stage public warnings. A forecast is not a guarantee; it is an input into precaution under uncertainty.

D.D. Exposure management therefore depends partly on infrastructure. Filtration in schools and homes, clean-air shelters, workplace rules, indoor refuge, and transport design all shape what a smoke episode means in practice. The same ambient concentration can produce different health consequences in communities with different building quality, employment patterns, or access to conditioned indoor space. Smoke is thus both an atmospheric hazard and a social amplifier of pre-existing inequality.

E.E. One policy mistake is to treat smoke response as a narrow emergency matter detached from everyday planning. In reality, recurrent smoke seasons can influence school calendars, building codes, labour protections, hospital preparedness, and even energy reliability when haze affects solar generation or public demand patterns. The boundary between disaster response and routine governance becomes less stable as smoke events become more frequent. This is why some researchers argue that smoke should be planned for less like a surprise and more like a seasonal system stress.

F.F. Communication is difficult because visible smoke does not map perfectly onto health significance. Some dangerous conditions look dramatic; others are less intuitively legible. Over-warning can produce fatigue, yet under-warning shifts the burden of interpretation onto households with unequal access to information and protective options. Effective governance depends on explaining uncertainty clearly while still giving actionable advice. The problem is not that science is absent. It is that actionable certainty is often unavailable on the timetable at which families and institutions must decide.

G.G. Wildfire smoke reveals a larger transition in climate risk governance. Many hazards once described as exceptional are becoming recurrent enough to reorganise ordinary systems. When this happens, the central policy question changes from how to respond after impact to how to live with periodic disruption without normalising preventable harm. Smoke episodes are significant because they force institutions to decide whose exposure is buffered collectively and whose is left to private improvisation.

H.H. The most serious lesson is therefore administrative rather than atmospheric. Better forecasting matters, but it cannot carry the whole burden of protection. Governments that rely on prediction without investing in filtration, public facilities, labour rules, and targeted support will keep rediscovering the same vulnerability under different plumes. Smoke is not only something to model. It is something to govern.

I.I. That governance challenge grows sharper when smoke becomes seasonal rather than exceptional. Repeated disruptions teach families, schools, and employers to expect adaptation, but they do not guarantee that adaptation will be fair. Some households can buy filters, retreat indoors, or change routines; others cannot. The distribution of protection therefore becomes a standing policy question, not just an emergency concern. The smoke season becomes a test of whose resilience is publicly supported and whose is privately assumed by default in practice every season locally today.

Yes/No/Not Given

Questions 28-31

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 28-31, write YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

28. The writer believes wildfire smoke should be treated as more than a local by-product of fire.

29. The writer thinks distance from a fire is a reliable proxy for actual smoke exposure.

30. The passage states that smoke forecasts now remove the need for precautionary school closures.

31. The writer argues that over-warning is never a problem because public safety always improves with more alerts.

Note Completion

Questions 32-33

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

32. Smoke can affect populations far beyond the original ______ zone.

33. Authorities use smoke outlooks as an input into ______ under uncertainty.

Table Completion

Questions 34-35

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

34. The same outdoor concentration can have different effects because of unequal building quality and ______ patterns.

35. Recurrent smoke seasons can shape building codes and school ______.

Flow-chart Completion

Questions 36-37

Complete the flow chart below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

36. Forecasting combines meteorology with satellite observations and atmospheric ______.

37. Without stronger support systems, households may be pushed into private ______.

Diagram Labelling

Questions 38-39

Label the diagram below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

38. type of public facility that can reduce exposure during severe smoke episodes

39. building-system improvement named as part of smoke protection

Short-answer Questions

Question 40

Answer the question below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for your answer.

40. What does the final paragraph say smoke is not only something to do, but something to govern?