SAU researchers hope to develop pest, drought resistant tea plants soon

SYLHET, Sept 27: The researchers of Sylhet Agricultural University (SAU) hope that they would soon be able to develop pest, disease and drought resistant tea plants to meet changing tea industry needs.

Professor Dr AFM Saiful Islam of SAU's Crop Botany and Tea Production Technology department said, "We are working on developing tea plants having higher resistance to pests and drought."

For over three years, he has been leading a team of researchers that is experimenting on tea plant varieties on a three-acre tea garden on the university campus.

"Our tea sector has been facing a number of problems including low yield for years. Several initiatives in this regard have been taken but they have not yet shown any fruitful results," said the researcher.

"Amid climate change, the weather behaviour has also changed in Bangladesh. Normally, tea leaf plucking remains suspended from November to March due to the absence of rain. This is why we need drought tolerant varieties," he pointed out.

According to Professor Islam, the varieties resistant to the red spider mite and tea mosquito bug, which attack tea plants during the drought, are very important.

He said, "We conducted our experiment on all the 23 clonal varieties, developed by the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute (BTRI), in addition to nine varieties of Toklai from India's Assam. There is also one bi-clonal variety (biclonal involves two clones) and four Bangladeshi garden clones are also there in our research."

The researcher said they have been working on developing such varieties that require less irrigation, face less pest attack and improve tea liquor quality and smell.

Professor Islam is the chief researcher of this project while Professor Dr M Abdul Maleque and Rashidul Hasan are also working in the project as researchers.

The project was initially assisted by the National Agriculture Technology Programme (NATP) of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council (BARC) but now it is being supported by the Krishi Gobeshona Foundation.

forsylhet@gmail.com