shoonya wrote:
New hardy varieties of rice show promise of producing high yields without the costly requirements of irrigation and application of commercial fertilizer by earlier high yielding varieties.
Meaning - New varieties show promise of producing high yields --> they can produce high yields without the costly required that were required by high yielding varieties. The yields were - irrigation + application of commercial fertilizer
(A) requirements of irrigation and application of commercial fertilizer by earlier high yielding varieties
- "requirements of irrigation" + "application ... fertilizer" = parallelism is correct
- application by earlier varieties - this gives a very funny meaning. It presents meaning as though the fertilizer is getting applied using high yielding varieties.
- Wrong
(B) requirements by earlier high yielding varieties of application of commercial fertilizer and irrigation
- application of (commercial fertilizer + irrigation) - ambiguity in parallelism
- "requirements of" would have been a better option
- Wrong
(C) requirements for application of commercial fertilizer and irrigation of earlier high yielding varieties
- "application of commercial fertilizer" is separated from "high yielding varieties" and the latter only modifies "irrigation" - Change in meaning
- Wrong
(D) application of commercial fertilizer and irrigation that was required by earlier high yielding varieties
- application of (commercial fertilizer + irrigation) - ambiguity in parallelism
- If application and irrigation are considered as separate entities then "high yielding varieties" modifies only irrigation - Change in meaning
- Wrong
(E) irrigation and application of commercial fertilizer that were required by earlier high yielding varieties
- "requirements of irrigation" + "application ... fertilizer" = parallelism is correct
- Both were required by "varieties" - correct modification
- Correct