Tocklai Tea Research Institute launches world’s first R&D-led sustainability code

The Tocklai Tea Research Centre has come up with a set of standards for sustainability.

This initiative has been taken in a bid to tackle the serious impact of climate change.

The research institute launched Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standard for tea industry, which promises to contribute towards “a people and planet positive” tea industry by 2030.

 TRA Secretary Joydeep Phukan stated, "The GAP-GMP standard supports strategies which will contribute in improving overall farm practices, management systems and sustainability performance. TRA Tocklai believes that adoption of the best practices, indicated in the standard, would contribute towards a people and planet positive tea industry by 2030 with continuous improvements."

"This is the first homegrown sustainbilty certification," said Dipanjol Deka, Secretary, Tea Association of India.

The TRA Tocklai GAP-GMP Standard, which will come into effect from January 2023, recognises the challenges faced by the tea industry due to climate change. It also prescribes climate-resilient practices to mitigate climate change impacts, improving resilience of the industry.

A released statement suggests that the standard recommends for maintaining healthy soils, conserving water and energy resources, avoiding deforestation and encouraging afforestation programmes, using climate-smart planting material, protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversities, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, among others.

Prabhat Bezboruah Chairman of TRA suggested that Tocklai should come out with climate resilient tea clones after it has successfully sequenced the tea genome. This will go a long way in addressing the problems of drought and pest incidence. He informed the members of the trials on different kind of fertilisers such as nano urea and polyhalite taken up by Tocklai in the last two years. Israel Chemicals Ltd from Tel Aviv presented their joint TRA ICL work on polyhalite for the tea plantations.

Tocklai Tea Research Institute of Tea Research Association has been the pioneer R&D organization globally in the field of tea research and engineering since 1911. Through its wide range of R&D activities over 112 years, TRA Tocklai has actually made tea plantations economically viable in North India and have made significant contributions by developing more than 200 tea cultivars, suitable agro-techniques and location specific package of practices for nutrition, crop protection, tea processing, methodology of sustainable tea plantations and production. TRA Tocklai invented the CTC tea and Rotorvane machine which revolutionised tea production and consumption in the world.

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