Carcass, i want to know if my thinking is right here
(A) Agricultural scientists identified and developed alternatives to the gongoren plant which supplied the flavored leaves and these were freely made available to the farmers of the region in which the consumption of gongoren leaves declined drastically after 1995.
well we arent discussing about the decline of gongoren consumption dude to the introduction of an alternative but rather because of the change in flavour, so A isnt the answer(B) A particular pesticide that farmers started using from 1995 to increase the yield of gongoren leaves adversely affected the growth of bacteria that was responsible for providing the requisite flavor without which the residents of the particular region would have no reason to consume gongoren leaves.
it is a plausible explanation indeed and it talks about the cause for the flavor change and the reason for its change (C) Gongoren leaves naturally lose their flavor if they are not harvested at the right time and this happened in several areas and during several seasons in the years before 1995 resulting in significant crop losses and a sharp rise in the wholesale and retail prices of the gongoren leaves .
we're discussing about a plausible cause for decline of gongoren AFTER 1995 not BEFORE 1995, so C isnt the right option(D) The flavor of the gongoren leaves cannot be attributed to climatic and weather conditions thought to be favorable to the cultivation of the gongoren plants and to be the causative factors for the presence of the characteristic flavor of the gongoren leaves.
well weather changes all the time , had there's been a cause which drastically altered the weather after 1995, then this option could've been a plausible one. without any apparent reason this argument doesnt make any sense, so D is correct (E) Gongoren leaves have recently been discovered in laboratory researches to have properties not unlike those of other staple foods used by the people of the particular region and this may have been the reason people became fond of the gongoren as a staple food.
this argument doesnt discuss anything related the cause for the flavor change so this is definitely not the correct optionso B has to be the correct option