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Jorhat, Feb. 3: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will help the tea industry study the impact of climate change on tea bushes.
The additional vice-chairman of Tea Research Association, Prabhat Bezboruah, said the recently formed working group on global climate change would take help from Nasa to study climate change and its impact on tea bushes.
“The working group will be led by India and scientists from Tocklai Experimental Station will spearhead the study,” said Bezboruah, who attended the just concluded 20th session of the Inter-Governmental Group under the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations hosted by Sri Lanka.
A 13-member delegation from India, including government officials and tea industry captains, attended the three-day event held at Colombo from January 30. Representatives of almost all tea producing nations participated in it.
Bezboruah said Nasa had agreed to provide necessary help to the global tea community and the memorandum of understanding would be signed soon. This will be first time the world’s most advanced research organisation will come to the aid of the tea industry to enable it to cope with global warming and subsequent climate change.
The impact of climate change on the tea plant has been a major concern for the tea industry in recent times with Tocklai Experimental Station, the oldest tea research station in the world, appealing to the global tea community to work jointly to save the tea plant which may fail to adapt itself to the climate change.
Presenting his paper at the recently concluded World Tea Science Congress at Tocklai, tea scientist R.M. Bhagat of Tocklai had warned that the impact of climate change might grow in the near future and severely affect tea bushes.
“No major impact has been noticed on the tea plant as of now but there is every possibility that it may fail to adapt to the climatic change on its own,” Bhagat had said.
Tocklai has been working with prominent international institutions like ITC (the Neth-erlands) and Cranfield University (the UK) to work out strategies to help the tea plant withstand climate change.
Studies conducted at Tocklai have revealed that the average annual rainfall is receding alarmingly in the region. In the last 92 years, more than 200mm of annual average rainfall appears to have been lost.
This decrease has also been observed in the active production season (April to October) of tea.
“Since a tea plant stays in the field for more than 50 years, decreasing rainfall will certainly produce some stress in the long run,” a study says, adding that there have also been changes in temperature.
It adds that the average minimum temperature has risen in many places by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius over the past nine decades while the maximum temperature in the active production phase has decreased.
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