Jorhat, Nov. 10: The Tocklai Tea Research Institute is looking beyond the national boundary for development of tea, with Myanmar and Turkey seeking assistance from the world's oldest tea research institute.
A German company working in Myanmar has sought help from Tocklai to develop tea cultivation in that country while Turkey has approached Tocklai directly to revive its tea industry.
Tocklai has worked with several reputed institutions around the world for development of tea but this will be the first time it will provide technical support directly to a foreign country.
Prabhat Bezboruah, chairman of the Tea Research Association (TRA) under which Tocklai functions, told The Telegraph today that GIZ (the Deutsche Gesellschaft Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), a German company with headquarters in Eschborn, has sought technical help from Tocklai to develop tea in Shan state of Myanmar.
"Since Myanmar has a climatic condition similar to India, our experts will not have much of a problem in helping the country in the tea sector," he said.
He said TRA was trying to work out the modalities and was hopeful that something would be formulated very soon. "A team of experts from Tocklai will visit Myanmar," he added. The tea development project in Myanmar is scheduled to start in February next year.
The German firm had, in 2013, selected Shan state for development and had chosen tea, mango and tourism as prioritised sectors. Namhsan, Kyaukme, Namkham, Kutkai, Kalaw, Yatsouth, Mong Hsu and Mong Tone townships in Shan state are the major tea-growing areas.
Bezboruah, who recently took charge of TRA, said Turkey had made a similar approach and things were moving in the right direction.
He said the developments would help TRA, which is under tremendous financial crisis, generate internal revenue. The association, which is under the commerce ministry, is yet to receive about Rs 40 crore from the government. It's liabilities hover around Rs 10 crore. Bezbaruah said the government had directed TRA to generate internal revenue by 100 per cent within the next two years and they had set a target of earning Rs 6 crore by 2018.
Ongoing research work on several important projects on tea have been stalled at the105-year-old institute because of this "unprecedented" financial crisis.
Since its inception in 1911, though the premier tea research institute could successfully stitch together a string of trailblazing research outputs and innovations for development of tea, it has not been provided with the requisite amount of government funds even for normal functioning.
A member of Tocklai Employees' Association said scientists could not engage adequate number of manpower for several important works like data collection and experimentation for some government-funded projects as limited funds were released by the government over the past few years. Tocklai engages over 400 employees for its daily research and development work though only 139 of them, including scientists, officials and other staff, are permanent.
