Cambridge IGCSE Biology 0610/22 is the May/June 2026 Paper 2 (Extended Multiple Choice), variant 2. It has 40 questions worth one mark each, lasts 45 minutes and is sat by every Extended candidate. There is no negative marking, so leave no question blank. The paper leaned heavily on data: six questions needed a calculation and several more depended on reading a graph or trace. This guide gives the answer and topic for every question and shows the working behind the keyed answers. The paper and its mark scheme are free on the Tutopiya Learning Portal.

For an overview of all six 0610 papers from this series, see IGCSE Biology 0610 May/June 2026 past papers: what came up and how it was marked.

0610/22 at a glance

Syllabus area	Questions	Number of questions
Characteristics, classification and cells	1–4	4
Osmosis, biological molecules and enzymes	5–8	4
Plant nutrition and transport in plants	9, 10, 12–14	5
Human nutrition, gas exchange, respiration and excretion	11, 19–21	4
Transport in animals, disease and immunity, drugs	15–18, 25	5
Coordination and response	22–24	3
Reproduction	26–28	3
Inheritance, variation and selection	29–32	4
Organisms, their environment and human influences	33–38	6
Biotechnology and genetic modification	39, 40	2
Total		40

Answer key and topic for every question

Question	What it tested	Answer
1	Life characteristics shown by a man walking to a door	A
2	Arthropods with more than three pairs of legs, from a bar chart	A
3	Where in the cell aerobic respiration happens	B
4	Actual leaf thickness in µm from magnification	D
5	Final potato cylinder length from a ratio graph	B
6	DNA bases that pair across the two strands	D
7	Correct statement about enzyme action and temperature	D
8	Ranking four amylases by rate from a graph	B
9	Pathway of carbon dioxide into chloroplasts	B
10	Naming a labelled layer in a leaf	C
11	Where fatty acid concentration is highest around a villus	C
12	Positions of xylem and phloem in a root	A
13	Why transpiration happens	A
14	Correctly labelled translocation diagram	C
15	Definition of double circulation	C
16	What the pulmonary vein carries, and in which direction	D
17	Definition of passive immunity	A
18	Region where the cholera toxin causes chloride secretion	B
19	Intercostal muscle action on a thorax volume graph	C
20	What aerobic and anaerobic respiration share	A
21	Function of the glomerulus	B
22	Where neurotransmitter binds on a motor neurone	B
23	When glucagon peaks, from a blood glucose curve	C
24	Shoot growth of a seedling on a rotating disc	A
25	Which infections antibiotics can treat	C
26	Definition of pollination	C
27	Correct statement about human reproduction	B
28	Gas exchange direction and site between mother and fetus	A
29	What forms the genetic code and what DNA codes for	C
30	Haploid chromosome number from a diploid cell diagram	C
31	Probability of polydactyly from a cat pedigree	C
32	Choosing parents for selective breeding of wheat	C
33	Step in the nitrogen cycle done by denitrifying bacteria	D
34	Growth curve phases affected by limiting factors	D
35	Why herbicides are used on crops	A
36	Definition of biodiversity	D
37	Order of three events in eutrophication	D
38	Type of assisted reproduction and where sperm is placed	B
39	Enzyme used in biological washing powder	D
40	Example of human genes inserted into another organism	A

What the paper tested, topic by topic

Characteristics, classification and cells (Questions 1–4)

• Q1: walking towards and opening a door shows excretion, respiration and sensitivity (A). Growth, nutrition and reproduction are not shown by a short walk.
• Q2 (bar chart): insects have exactly three pairs of legs, so count the other three groups: arachnids 10 + crustaceans 12 + myriapods 5 = 27 (A).
• Q3: aerobic respiration takes place in the mitochondrion (B).
• Q4 (calculation): actual size = image size ÷ magnification = 6 mm ÷ 40 = 0.15 mm, and 0.15 × 1000 = 150 µm (D). Option B gives the right number in the wrong unit: 0.15 is the answer in millimetres, not micrometres.

Osmosis, biological molecules and enzymes (Questions 5–8)

• Q5 (graph and calculation): at 0.1 moles per dm³ the ratio of final to initial length is 1.2. The cylinders started at 4 cm, so the final length is 4 × 1.2 = 4.8 cm (B). Option D, 1.2 cm, is the ratio read off the graph with the multiplication skipped.
• Q6: the bases that pair across DNA strands are T and A (D). A with C, G with A and G with T are not complementary.
• Q7: the frequency of effective collisions between enzyme and substrate is highest at the optimum temperature (D). Kinetic energy rises, not falls, as temperature increases (A), maltase is complementary to maltose, not starch (B), and pepsin works in acid conditions (C).
• Q8 (graph): work out each rate from the graph and compare it with S at 0.75 g/s. Amylase P makes 20 g of reducing sugar in the first 20 s, 1.0 g/s, so it is faster than S. Amylase R makes 15 g in 40 s, 0.375 g/s, so it is slowest. Q sits between them and takes about 50 s to reach the 30 g plateau, roughly 0.6 g/s over the reaction. The key gives P → S → Q → R (B). Be careful: Q’s steepest early stretch reads close to 0.75 g/s, so the key treats Q’s rate across the reaction as a whole rather than its first few seconds.

Plant nutrition and transport in plants (Questions 9, 10, 12–14)

• Q9: carbon dioxide enters through the stomata into the air spaces of the spongy mesophyll, then into chloroplasts (B). Gases do not pass through the waxy cuticle, and water reaches leaves in the xylem, not the phloem.
• Q10: layer X, below the palisade cells, is the spongy mesophyll (C).
• Q12: in a root the xylem forms the central star shape and the phloem sits between its arms (A).
• Q13: transpiration happens because stomata must open to let carbon dioxide in, and water vapour then diffuses out (A). Roots do not absorb water by active transport (B), and the xylem does not carry amino acids (C).
• Q14: the correct diagram shows sucrose moving in the phloem from source to sink (C). Diagrams showing glucose, or with source and sink swapped, are wrong.

Human nutrition, gas exchange, respiration and excretion (Questions 11, 19–21)

• Q11: fatty acids are absorbed into the lacteal, so their concentration is highest in the lymph leaving the villus, arrow C.
• Q19 (graph): the thorax volume rises from Q (2500 cm³) to R (6000 cm³) during a deep breath in, when the external intercostal muscles contract, and falls from R to S (1200 cm³) during a forced breath out, when the internal intercostals contract. Row C pairs internal with R to S and external with Q to R.
• Q20: both types of respiration break down glucose, C₆H₁₂O₆ (A). Only anaerobic respiration in muscles causes an oxygen debt, and neither uses carbon dioxide.
• Q21: the glomerulus filters the blood (B). Deamination and urea formation happen in the liver, and glucose is reabsorbed further along the nephron.

Transport in animals, disease and immunity, drugs (Questions 15–18, 25)

• Q15: in a double circulation blood passes through the heart twice for each complete circuit of the body (C).
• Q16: the pulmonary vein carries oxygenated blood to the heart (D).
• Q17: passive immunity is protection by antibodies acquired from another individual (A). Making your own antibodies, including after infection, is active immunity.
• Q18: the cholera toxin causes chloride ions to be secreted into the small intestine, labelled B; water follows by osmosis, causing diarrhoea. On the diagram A is the stomach, C the large intestine and D the liver.
• Q25: antibiotics treat bacterial infections only (C), not viral ones.

Coordination and response (Questions 22–24)

• Q22: neurotransmitter binds to receptor proteins on the dendrites of the motor neurone, labelled B. A is the cell body, C the myelin sheath and D the axon endings.
• Q23 (graph): glucagon is released when blood glucose is low. The curve dips lowest, to just over 70 mg per dm³, between 14:00 and 15:30 (C). In the other three windows glucose is at a higher, steady level or rising to a peak after a meal, when insulin rather than glucagon is released.
• Q24: as the disc keeps turning, gravity acts on the seedling equally from every side, so the shoot shows no gravitropism and grows straight out horizontally (A).

Reproduction (Questions 26–28)

• Q26: pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther to a stigma (C).
• Q27: the egg cell, the female gamete, has a large store of energy (B). The traps: fertilisation is the fusion of gamete nuclei (C is too loose), it is an embryo, not a zygote, that implants in the uterus lining (A), and sperm are deposited in the vagina, not the uterus (D).
• Q28: carbon dioxide passes from fetus to mother and oxygen from mother to fetus, across the placenta (A), not the umbilical cord.

Inheritance, variation and selection (Questions 29–32)

• Q29: the genetic code is the sequence of bases, and DNA codes for the sequence of amino acids in a protein (C). Option D, “sequence of proteins”, is the near miss.
• Q30: the diploid cell shows eight chromosomes (four pairs), so a haploid cell has 4 (C).
• Q31 (pedigree): X’s father has polydactyly but his own mother did not, so he must be heterozygous; X’s mother is unaffected, so homozygous recessive. Half their offspring are expected to inherit the dominant allele, a probability of 0.50 (C).
• Q32: to breed short wheat with strong stems, choose the shorter plant from type G and the thicker-stemmed plant from type H: plants 2 and 3 (C).

Organisms, their environment and human influences (Questions 33–38)

• Q33: denitrifying bacteria turn nitrate in the soil into nitrogen gas in the air, arrow D. Arrow A runs the other way, nitrogen fixation.
• Q34: predation, disease and lack of food limit the population in the stationary and death phases (D).
• Q35: herbicides increase yield by reducing competition between weeds and crops (A).
• Q36: biodiversity is the number of different species in an area (D). The other options define a population, an ecosystem and a community.
• Q37: eutrophication runs 3 → 2 → 1 (D): plants first use more nitrate to make amino acids and grow, then their protein is decomposed to ammonium ions, and finally fish respire less aerobically as oxygen runs out.
• Q38: placing sperm in the female’s uterus is artificial insemination (B). IVF fertilises eggs outside the body.

Biotechnology and genetic modification (Questions 39 and 40)

• Q39: biological washing powders use protease (D) to break down protein stains.
• Q40: human genes are inserted into bacteria to produce proteins (A), as with human insulin. The plant examples involve genes that give herbicide or pest resistance or better nutrition, not human genes.

Where the marks are on 0610/22

• Ecology and human influences carried 6 of the 40 marks (Questions 33–38), the largest single area.
• Human physiology across nutrition, transport, gas exchange, respiration, excretion and disease carried 9 marks.
• Six questions needed a calculation: the arthropod total (Q2), leaf thickness in µm (Q4), potato cylinder length (Q5), the amylase rates (Q8), the haploid number (Q30) and the pedigree probability (Q31).
• Seven questions depended on reading a graph, chart, trace or pedigree: Q2, Q5, Q8, Q19, Q23, Q31 and Q34. Several of the wrong options were values you get by reading the graph correctly and then stopping one step short.
• Precise wording decided several questions, such as “sequence of amino acids” against “sequence of proteins” (Q29) and “fusion of gamete nuclei” against “fusion of gametes” (Q27).

How to self-mark 0610/22

1. Mark against the key. The mark scheme is a single list of 40 letters. One mark per correct letter, no marks taken off for wrong answers.
2. Tag each wrong answer by topic using the at-a-glance table above to see where your losses cluster.
3. Tag each wrong answer by reason: missing knowledge (for example, which intercostal muscles contract on breathing out), a misread (such as missing “µm” in Q4) or a calculation slip (stopping at the ratio in Q5).
4. Redo every graph question you got wrong by writing the values you read off and the sum you did with them.
5. Revise knowledge gaps first, then practise slowing down on data questions.

Sit 0610/22 as a timed mock

You have 45 minutes for 40 questions, a little over one minute each. Use two passes: answer everything you are sure of first, flag the longer data questions, then come back.

Block	Questions	Time
First pass	1–10	9 minutes
First pass	11–20	9 minutes
First pass	21–30	9 minutes
First pass	31–40	10 minutes
Second pass on flagged graph and calculation questions	–	5 minutes
Check every question has one answer	–	3 minutes

Never leave a question blank. A wrong answer costs nothing.

Other May/June 2026 0610 papers

• 0610 Paper 12 (Core Multiple Choice)
• 0610 Paper 32 (Core Theory)
• 0610 Paper 42 (Extended Theory)
• 0610 Paper 52 (Practical Test)
• 0610 Paper 62 (Alternative to Practical)

Practise and download

• Download 0610/22 and its mark scheme on the Learning Portal →
• All 0610 May/June 2026 papers: overview and marking patterns
• Try a free IGCSE Biology quiz

Need help with a 0610 topic? Book a free trial lesson with an IGCSE Biology tutor →

Frequently asked questions

What topics were on 0610 Paper 22 May/June 2026? +

All 40 questions spread across the syllabus, with a strong lean on data: an arthropod bar chart, potato cylinders in sugar solutions, an amylase graph, a thorax volume trace, a day's blood glucose curve, a population growth curve and a cat pedigree. Ecology and human influences had six questions, the most of any area.

How many marks is 0610/22 and how long is it? +

It has 40 multiple-choice questions, one mark each, for a total of 40 marks. You have 45 minutes.

What was the answer to the potato cylinder question on 0610/22? +

B, 4.8 cm. The graph gives a ratio of final to initial length of 1.2 at 0.1 moles per dm³, and the cylinders started at 4 cm, so the final length is 4 × 1.2 = 4.8 cm.

What was the answer to the leaf thickness question on 0610/22 2026? +

D, 150 µm. The image was 6 mm thick at ×40, so the actual thickness is 6 ÷ 40 = 0.15 mm, which is 0.15 × 1000 = 150 µm.

Is 0610/22 the Core or Extended paper? +

Extended. Paper 2 is the Extended multiple-choice paper, sat alongside Paper 4 (Extended Theory) and either Paper 5 or Paper 6. Core candidates sit Paper 1 instead.

Where can I download 0610/22 May/June 2026 and its mark scheme? +

Both are free to download and print on the Tutopiya Learning Portal, on the Cambridge IGCSE Biology 0610 past papers page.

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