I have created a new site collection under root and did my changes in development server. I took a backup and restored to another test server which doesnot have this new site collection.

I have a doubt.

Shall I create the same site collection in the test server and restore the site collection from development server

Or

Restore the site collection from development server with out creating site collection in the test server

The second, there is no advantage in pre-creating a Site Collection at a URL to then replace it with another one from a backup.