🧪 GSSSB Food Safety Officer 2026 — 84-post Class-3 CBRT/OMR: 210 questions, official ten-unit syllabus, dual 40% threshold

Exam identity: Advertisement 465/2026-27 (84 vacancies), Commissionerate of Food and Drugs Control Administration, Gujarat. This page is for one GSSSB Food Safety Officer Class-3 recruitment examination, not FSSAI Central recruitment or a generic civil-services test. The 84-post normal drive and 6-post PwBD special drive are separate advertisements and must retain separate SarkariSapna Exam identities and separate application links.

📌 Official-status check: Advertisement date 27 October 2026. Exam date, centre, admit-card publication, answer-key schedule, results and category cutoffs have not been issued in the supplied material. The advertised syllabus/pattern is real, but do not invent a test date.

🍰 Exam-wide weighting — 90 general versus 120 technical marks

📊 Visualize the 210-mark official exam split

The pie is about actual parts of the same 210-mark paper, not candidate cutoffs. Part A contributes 42.9% and Part B 57.1% of advertised paper marks; nevertheless, both must independently clear the 40% minimum.

🎯 The one-stage Food Safety Officer examination, explained

GSSSB provides one objective MCQ examination in CBRT or OMR mode. A single paper contains Part A: 90 questions/90 marks and Part B: 120 questions/120 marks. Candidates have 180 minutes for both parts together; one-fourth of a question's allotted marks is deducted for each wrong answer. It is not two separate recruitment rounds or an interview-driven competition. Exam date, test-centre allotment and admit-card release date are not yet announced.

📚 Part A — 90 marks, a frequently underestimated qualifying gate

The official Part-A syllabus includes coding–decoding, directions, relations, sequence/analogy, numerical and visual reasoning, Venn diagrams, data sufficiency and charts, mathematics from arithmetic through algebra, geometry and trigonometry, constitution/citizenship/institutions, recent state/national/international developments and paragraph-based inference in Gujarati and English. Do not treat the language-comprehension questions as a separate language proficiency test: they count within the single 90-mark Part A.

🧬 Part B — 120 technical marks with ten official units

📊 Explore official technical-unit mark weightings

The official breakdown makes Food Laws (30), Basic Food Science (20), Microbiology (15) and Food Safety/Quality/Hygiene (15) the four highest-mark units. Together these represent 80 of 120 technical marks, or two-thirds. This is a prioritisation clue, not permission to skip the remaining 40 marks. Units are marked as in the 13-page original official syllabus accompanying Advertisement 465/2026-27 and the corresponding FSO syllabus instructions.

Unit 1 — Food Laws, Regulations and Certification (30). Food Safety and Standards Act 2006; FSSAI rules/regulations from 2011; national standards, product standards, enforcement responsibilities, misbranding/adulteration, food authorities, Codex Alimentarius, BIS, AGMARK, certification and accreditation. Preparation should distinguish the statute, delegated regulations, standards and inspection powers.

Unit 2 — Basic Food Science (20). Food constituents (carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, vitamins/minerals and enzymes); nutritional physiology and absorption; chemical/physical/colloidal properties; preservation history, fortification and Eat Right initiatives. Link concepts to food composition and public-health outcomes, not rote definitions alone.

Unit 3 — Food Microbiology and Biotechnology (15). Microbial growth/classification, pathogens and foodborne disease, toxins, spoilage in milk, meats, grains and produce, culture methods, microbial testing and enumeration, fermentation, genetically modified organisms and protein/enzyme technology.

Unit 4 — Food & Nutrition (5). Balanced diet, recommended dietary allowances, undernutrition and deficiency prevention, national nutrition programmes and nutrition-status assessment.

Unit 5 — Preservation, Packaging and Storage (5). Thermal/nonthermal methods, legal and practical packaging requirements, material evaluation and storage-environment controls.

Unit 6 — Agricultural Science (5). Indian agriculture, cropping systems, livestock/aquaculture/horticulture, farming-based livelihood and value-chain fundamentals.

Unit 7 — Food Safety, Quality Control, Hygiene and Standards (15). Physical, chemical and biological hazards, GHP/GMP/SSOP, HACCP, ISO/FSMS 22000, pest control, contamination prevention, risk control and sanitation.

Unit 8 — Animal Product Processing (5). Meat, poultry, fish and egg composition/handling, processing and safety; familiar dairy adulterant detection concepts.

Unit 9 — Dairy Science (10). Milk chemistry, microbiology, pasteurisation, sterilisation, homogenisation, cheese/fermented products, quality assurance and testing for adulteration.

Unit 10 — Food Processing Technology (10). Filtration, high-pressure and nonthermal methods, dehydration, canning, irradiation, freeze methods, aseptic/hurdle technology, alternative processing and emerging heating methods.

✅ Independent qualifying standards: 36 in Part A and 48 in Part B

The notified floor is 40% in each part separately, for every category. This means the 90-mark section requires 36 marks and the 120-mark technical section 48 marks. A candidate scoring 30/90 in A and 100/120 in B has 130/210 overall but does not meet Part A's 40% requirement. Conversely, crossing both minimum thresholds guarantees neither a high rank nor appointment: selection is category-specific, based on merit and certificate verification.

📊 Compare each independently compulsory threshold

🧮 Negative marking, cancellation and normalization

For a normal one-mark question, a wrong answer incurs −0.25 mark; unattempted questions avoid this penalty. If the final answer key cancels a question, the Board describes redistribution of marks pro rata over the surviving questions. Where normalization is applied, rely on the Board's published normalized/result marks, not a coaching-site score calculator. Never assume an answer-key challenge is open until the actual objection notice is released.

Illustrative strategy, not a forecast: Work through known technical questions first, then the lower-risk Aptitude section, preserving enough time to complete both independently qualifying parts. Mock sessions should use the published 210-question / 180-minute structure rather than inventing a 100-question or 120-minute examination. Ask yourself whether an attempted guess has enough probability of being correct to justify the one-fourth penalty; accuracy in Food Laws and Hygiene deserves focused revision.

🎫 Admit card, official answer key, merit list and DV — what comes later

The Board will publish exam date, centre and call-letter download directions on its own website; a dated admit-card issue notice is not available in the examined documents. Subsequently, provisional answer key → objection consideration → final key → provisional result → certificate verification → category-wise selection/waiting list are envisaged by the recruitment rules. Normally approximately twice the number of advertised category-wise vacancies may be called for original-certificate checks, subject to rank and the separately specified qualifying standards; this is not an assurance of DV for everyone scoring 40%.

Candidates seeking scribe/compensatory time should consult the official disabled-candidate section and file prescribed documents by the Board's stipulated time. The notification describes 20 minutes per hour of approved compensatory time where applicable, original disability evidence, and prior approval. Do not self-allocate extra time or assume the disability certificate alone always proves writing impairment.

No admit-card, answer-key, result, category cutoff, DV schedule or separate official subject-wise cutoff PDF has yet been released in the examined 27 October documents. They must be added to SarkariSapna only after a new primary official update, keeping the examination identity unchanged.### 🧭 Normal 84-post drive versus the separate PwBD drive

This exam links to Advertisement 465, whose 84 seats are divided among UR 40, EWS 8, SEBC 19, SC 7 and ST 10. The 26 women earmarks and eight ex-servicemen earmarks are inside these totals. The separate Advertisement 466 reserves six seats for PwBD applicants; do not merge the two vacancy rosters or assume the call letters will share an identical exam date until the Board says so.

❓ Questions that change an applicant's decision

Is this a job in FSSAI? No. The employer/appointing office is Gujarat's Commissionerate of Food and Drugs Control Administration under the Health and Family Welfare Department; GSSSB runs recruitment. FSSAI law is part of the work and syllabus, not the recruiting employer.

Is ₹40,800 the future Level-5 basic? No. It is the first-five-year fixed monthly payment. Subject to satisfactory service and stipulated government/judicial conditions, later regular appointment may use Level-5 ₹29,200–₹92,300, not a promise of a ₹92,300 starting wage. The exact in-hand after deductions is Not specified.

Is Chemistry bachelor's degree enough? Not solely under the Master's Chemistry route. Other specified degree paths must be independently matched to the actual official recruitment rules and the September 2023 recognized list.

Must a candidate pass both Part A and Part B? Yes: at least 36/90 and 48/120; the combined 84/210 minimum cannot substitute for passing each part separately.

Can applicants from another state claim Gujarat reserved seats? The notice restricts Gujarat reservation and its concessions to qualified original Gujarat residents of the relevant category. Nationality alone does not grant category entitlement.

Does paying the fee guarantee a valid application? No; OTR, complete confirmation, correct certificate claims, timely online payment and the separate deadline are all essential.

🗂️ Event tracking — sources that matter

Authentic update channels: GSSSB Official Website and Gujarat OJAS Portal. Avoid treating unrelated FSO admit cards or prior-year scores as those of Advertisement 465/2026-27 (84 vacancies).