Strawberries, unlike picking bananas that are green and can be ripened artificially, must be picked when they are fully ripe, and they remain at peak flavor for only four or five days after that.

(A) Strawberries, unlike picking bananas that are green and can be ripened artificially, must be picked
(B) Picking strawberries, unlike with green bananas that can be ripened artificially, must be done
(C) Unlike bananas, which can be picked green and ripened artificially, strawberries must be picked
(D) Unlike with green bananas, which can be picked and ripened artificially, strawberry picking must be done
(E) Unlike picking bananas, strawberries cannot be picked green and ripened artificially, but must be picked

The answer is very obvious - C.

I have question about what "that" refers to. It doesn't seem to refer to any explicitly stated noun (phrase) but the "when" clause. I thought that in GMAT, a pronoun cannot refer to a clause.

I read the sentence as "Unlike bananas, ... , strawberries must be picked when they are fully ripe, and they remain at peak flavor for only four or five days after that event or that time." So I am in agreement with your assessment: that time = when they are fully ripe, or perhaps when they are picked.

GMAT specific advice: Don't worry so much about matching non-underlined pronouns on the GMAT to antecedents, unless a singular vs. positive noun split in the choices might be the antecedent.

Sometimes pronouns in English don't have an antecedent in the strictest sense:
"It was sunny and 70 degrees on Friday."
"Eat your lunch quickly because after that we need to catch the train."

The GMAT will never test you on such obscure pronoun usage.

_________________
Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

I was trying to understand more about "GMAT grammar" by reading the non-underline portions of the official questions...but it doesn't seem like a wise move
Thanks Emily. =)

actually, the non-underlined portions can, indeed, teach you a lot, especially about idiomatic expressions, modifiers, and other things that don't have to refer back to earlier parts of the sentence.

i can see emily's advice to be conservative here, but you can, and should, learn from the non-underlined parts. remember, if it appears in a non-underlined part, then it can also appear in a correct answer.

Hi Ron,

you mean: because "that" in this question refers to earlier parts of the sentence, it is not a good learning portion?

Actually, no. All Ron meant by that (I believe) was that we CAN learn about how the GMAT constructs grammar by reading the non-underlined portions of one sentence, so as to use the same patterns or phrasings on another sentence's underlined portion (the part we must choose). In this case the "that" is clearly correct, as it is not underlined.

I meet another different choice from B. My version is

B.Picking strawberries, unlike picking green bananas that can be ripened artificially, must be done

According to comparsion parallel, B and C are both right, aren't they? But which one is better?

the original is better in at least 3 ways.

--

one:
the meaning of your version differs from that of the original, in at least 2 different ways.
* if you say "green bananas that can be ripened artificially", then that's an essential clause - i.e., only some green bananas can be ripened artificially, and those are the ones you're talking about. the original sentence (with the nonessential clause using comma + "which") makes it clear that ALL bananas can be ripened artificially.
* also, you talk about "picking green bananas" - i.e., you are ONLY talking about bananas that are green. the original is talking about all bananas.

--

two:
your version is unacceptably wordy and awkward.
"picking strawberries must be done" is much, much worse than "strawberries must be picked".
if english is not your first language, you could be forgiven for creating examples with this sort of wordiness, but, given an OPTION (which is always the case on multiple-choice questions), you should certainly be able to tell that the latter of these 2 wordings is the better one.

--

three (more advanced):
you probably wouldn't use "picking strawberries" as a noun, anyway; you'd probably use "the picking of strawberries", if you wanted to write it in that way.

see problem #117 in the OG 11th edition for evidence of this distinction.