Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers, gains up to 1 meter a

Kinshook please post the official explanation .
Need some clarification to clear the doubts

Imo B

A tough one in my opinion.

The concept tested is the modifier and sentence structure.
The core sentence is "Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers ,experts indicate that bamboo, China’s forgotten plant, should be considered “green gold” ".. is a full sentence. Hence underlined part has to be a modifier.
So let us analyze each options.

Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers and and can be harvested in under ten years are parallel entities connected by and

A incorrect per above reasoning. gains is full verb so this is clause without a subject.

B Correct.

C Meaning error it seems to suggest that the bamboo tree harvests itself that is not possible. It can be harvested - so passive is correct.

D gaining is not parallel to harvesting per meaning. harvesting has to be in passive. Bamboo tree can not harvest itself.

E There is no cause and effect relationship per the original sentence. A structure X so that Y is not proper here. It suggests that in order to be harvested bamboo tree gains 1 meter a day. Incorrect

What's the antecedent of it? I can't find one!

Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers, gains up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken for the softest woods to mature, experts indicate that bamboo, China’s forgotten plant, should be considered “green gold”.

The author is trying to force parallelism here but gains is a verb which requires a subject and not a modifier. Hence the original construct is wrong.

A) gains up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken - Wrong as gains is a verb and it requires a subject
B) gaining up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time it takes - Gaining upto correctly modifies proceeding clause and the subject is it (the bamboo)
C) gains up to 1 meter a day, and harvests in under ten years, which is half the time taken - Error Similar to (A)
D) gaining daily up to 1 meter and harvesting in under ten years, half of the time taken - Harvesting cannot be a modifier and it doesn't have a helping verb with this.
E) gaining up to 1 meter a day so that it can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken - so that distort the meaning. No causal relationship here

(B) is the correct answer.

Antecedent doesn't always lies in before the pronoun. The antecedent for it is Bamboo.

I am stuck between option A and B. Why can not the subject of the verb 'gains' be bamboo?

Hi

What is the antecedent of second "it" ? Little ambiguous that it refers to the bamboo. Please clarify.

Same query. Can someone please explain ?

IMO - B

B. gaining up to 1 meter a day (Should not be parallel to the base statement: Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers, but rather effect and hence ing form), and can be harvested in under ten years (Maintains parallelism), half the time it takes

Hi e-gmat,
Please shed some light on this question.
If the 2nd 'it' refers to bamboo then replacing 'it' with bamboo.
The sentence can be read as '... half the time bamboo takes for softest wood to grow....'. How can this make sense?
Is ellipses at play here?

How can "gaining up" is parallel to can be harvested?

]
junii "gaining up" is acting as a modifier to "world’s swiftest growers".

Since it is one of the world’s swiftest growers, gains up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken for the softest woods to mature, experts indicate that bamboo, China’s forgotten plant, should be considered “green gold”.

This is a tough question, but let's break it down to get to the right answer:

MEANING
Bamboo...
1) is one of the fastest growers
2) gains up to 1 meter a day
3) can be harvested in under 10 years
i) which is half the time taken for the softest woods to mature

Once we understand the overall meaning of the sentence, let's dig each answer choice deeper and analyze issues:

A. gains up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken
If you think about it, "gains up to 1 meter a day" is not a distinct feature that separates from 1) discussed above. This is an additional information related to 1), and hence it's not preferred to use "gains up to 1 meter a day". Here, you want to modify 1) by using "comma verb-ing" to correctly modify 1).

B. gaining up to 1 meter a day, and can be harvested in under ten years, half the time it takes
Correct answer
For those of who eliminated B because of this annoying "it" at the end, "it" is the same as "half the time that it takes". What difference does it make? it is a placeholder pronoun, so it's okay to keep "it" there.

C. gains up to 1 meter a day, and harvests in under ten years, which is half the time taken
Same error as A and the usage of "harvests" is wrong because a bamboo does not harvests itself.

D. gaining daily up to 1 meter and harvesting in under ten years, half of the time taken
The usage of "harvesting" here is not correct because harvesting in under ten years does not logically modify the previous clause, "one of the swiftest growers". Also, this is very subtle, but "gaining daily up to 1 meter" slightly changes the meaning.

E. gaining up to 1 meter a day so that it can be harvested in under ten years, half the time taken
"so that it can be harvested" distorts the intended meaning.

Again, this is a very tough question, and I hope my explanation helps shed some light.

GMATNinja ChiranjeevSingh Can you please help with this question.

I was able to eliminate D and E as they changed the intended meaning
Eliminated C as it forces in a parallelism among : it is one of swiftest growers, gains upto 1m/day, and harvests in under 10yrs

Not sure if my above analysis is right - do correct me if I am wrong

I am confused between A and B:
1. gains upto 1 m/day vs gaining upto 1m/day
2. half the time taken for X to mature vs half the time it takes for X to mature

Hello @S190,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option A is incorrect because it maintains parallelism between the verb phrases "is one of the world’s swiftest growers" and "gains up to 1 meter a day"; the action of gaining up to a meter a day is an action subordinate to the action of being one of the world's swiftest growers, rather than a separate and equal action, so the two verb forms should not be parallel; remember, if a phrase is subordinate to another in terms of importance (or sharing a cause-effect relationship), the phrases do not maintain parallelism.

Option B correctly uses the present participle ("verb+ing") to refer to the subordinate action.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Comma + "GainING..." is a modifier of the previous action ("is one of the world's swiftest growers").
"Gains", on the other hand, is another verb in parallel to—and therefore separate from—that action.

These are directly contrasting, mutually exclusive functions. Consider the context to determine whether the part about gaining a meter per day is more information about the idea in the previous clause (so that the modifier is the right choice), or else a new, distinct observation (so that another verb is the right choice).

It should be pretty clear that the former is true.

This is a general truth about bamboo plants. It is independent of the timeframe (or, if you like, it's true in any possible timeframe).
The present tense is the correct tense in which to write such permanently true facts, so, "....it takes..." works. ("Taken" erroneously indicates that this process has been completed by the timeframe of the narration. It's a general fact, so there's no such thing as its completion.)