About 70 percent of the tomatoes grown in the United States come from

Responding to a pm:

Yes, the first part is an independent clause:

"About 70 percent of the tomatoes grown in the United States come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory,"

The second part is an absolute phrase:

"their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species."

Here is a bit on Absolute Phrases:

Often (but not always), this is the structure of an absolute phrase:

noun + participle (could be -ing or -ed) + optional modifier or object

It modifies an independent clause as a whole.

It is often useful in describing one part of the whole person/place/thing or in explaining a cause or condition etc. The absolute phrase above describes the life of the accused - a condition.

Other examples:
There was no one in sight and Paul, his hands still jammed in his pockets, scowled down the empty street.
We devoured the yummy cupcake, our fingers scraping the leftover frosting off the plates.


The second part of our original sentence tells us more about the engineered seeds. The DNA of the seeds is modified in the lab, not of the tomatoes. Tomatoes are grown from these seeds. So the use of absolute phrase is correct and all other options are incorrect.

By the way, this is a perfectly valid GMAT question and you could very easily get something similar in the real deal too. It also includes recognizing accurate meaning and hence is the favored type with GMAT these days.
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About 70 percent of the tomatoes grown in the United States come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species.

Subject is "70% of the tomatoes" which is plural; thus, verb must be come not comes. D and E eliminated.

A) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species.
"Their DNA -ed modifier" this part of the sentence is not a clause here "modified" is the past participle modifier modifying DNA.
"Their" has a clear antecedent as tomatoes, thus, this absolute phrase modifier is also legit.

B) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and also having their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
Restrictive modifier That is not parallel with participle modifier having.
"and also" is also redundant.

C) come from seeds engineered in a laboratory and that have had their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
Same error as in B, -ed modifier is not parallel to restrictive that modifier.

D) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory and with their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
E) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

This sentence correction problem uses an unusual modifier structure to “hide the correct answer” - a common tool used by testmakers that you learned about in the Advanced Verbal lesson. In (A), the phrase “their DNA modified….” is called an absolute phrase (a difficult but relatively common structure) and it is properly modifying seeds and how they have been engineered. Everything else in the sentence is fine so (A) is the correct answer. However many students will eliminate it because they are not familiar with the absolute phrase structure. The other four answer choices all have fatal flaws and if you use the proper strategy (“only eliminate when you are sure it is wrong” and “look for the easier decision points first”) then you will get this problem correct.

Hi all,

70 percent of X come from Y. ==> eliminate D & E

A) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - "their" is not correct and wordy here
B) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and also having their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - also having is not parallel
C) come from seeds engineered in a laboratory and that have had their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - Correct / That refers to the "70 percent of tomatoes"
D) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory and with their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - comes
E) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - comes

Hope it helps
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The key in identifying absolute modifiers is spotting the past participle in the non-essential phrase. Once the participle is found, test all the pronouns and you'll be home free.
IMO A.

VeritasPrepKarishma

Dear Karishma,

How to make sure that the word "their" modifies seeds but not tomatoes. I understand that the meaning does make sense, but seldom I found GMAT clarifying the correct usage of pronoun in the absolute phrase. I skipped A because of this pronoun ambiguity. Any help on this ?

"seeds" is the closest noun to "their" and is the logical antecedent to it. Hence, there is no pronoun ambiguity here.

Refer to this post for a write up on pronoun ambiguity:
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2016/0 ... -the-gmat/
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If one is clear with a couple of fundamentals, this question is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. 70% of the Tomatoes is plural and hence the verb should be a plural; per se, D and E are out.

2. The second fundamental is much more central; B and C are unparallel fragments with a clause on the left side of 'and' a phrase on the right side.

Eventually, We are left with only A.
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Example1: 70 % of the students(plural) are weak in verbal.
The norm is that percent of a plural is plural
Example 2; 70% of the class(singular) is weak in verbal
Percent of a singular is singular.

Percent of tomatoes come because tomatoes are a plural
percent of water come or comes? Percent of water comes because water is singular.

Look at this Official example.

Over 75 percent of the energy produced in France derives from nuclear power.
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(A) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
-percent of tomatoes ... come = correct.
For SANAM (some, any, most, all, none) pronouns, majority, minority and percent the verb follows the noun in the "of noun" phrase
- their DNA - here their can refer to tomatoes / seeds.
Analyze the meaning - the initial part of the sentence says that "seeds have been engineered in a lab". Thus if seeds are engineered the naturally the DNA should refer to seeds and not tomatoes.
- Seems to be correct option

(B) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and also having their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
- Come = correct
- "and also having" - "and also" = redundant
-"also having" - is not parallel to "come from seeds / grown" - parallelism error
- Wrong

(C) come from seeds engineered in a laboratory and that have had their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
-"come" = correct
- "and that" there is no structure that can be parallel to "and that" in the previous part of the sentence
- Wrong

(D) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory and with their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
- "Comes" - wrong
-"and with" - wrong
- Wrong

(E) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species
- "Comes" - wrong
-"and their" - lacks a verb
-Wrong

Answer: A

Hi VeritasKarishma
I am still not sure if we have to use that logic that pronoun should refer to the nearest noun. I read in your blog that "Both the pronoun and its antecedent serve as subjects in their respective clauses", so in this case seeds is definitely not the subject. Can you please help

Also, the subject starts with 70% and tomatoes is in prepositional phrase, and I read in egmat course that subjects are not part of prepositional phrases. So is it correct to assume that because of this logic their should refer to seeds and not tomatoes. Payal from egmat can you please help..

To me it looked like a run-on sentence - Can you please help me distinguish between a run-on sentence & sentence like this (where we have an absolute phrase)?

(A) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - correct

(B) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and also having their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - comma + conjunction implies that those 2 are independent clauses which is incorrect.

(C) come from seeds engineered in a laboratory and thathave had their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - Incorrect as that is used for seeds; those should be used for seeds

(D) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory and with their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - tomatoes are plural; comes is incorrect

(E) comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species - incorrect - same as D

You can approach this question in two ways

I believe you have already eliminated options D AND E - Because of subject-verb agreement

Now moving on...

1. One way to approach it is to understand the structure of an absolute phrase:

noun + participle (ing/ed) + modifier or object

It modifies an independent clause as a whole.

Only A has that structure among the 3 options left

2. Look at it as a parallelism question

I believe this approach is fairly simple...

Both options B and C have faulty parallelism.

(B) come from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, and also having their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species

(C) come from seeds engineered in a laboratory and that have had their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in tomato species

I hope it helps!