Priority Areas

As per the provision of Tea Act (1953), Tea Board of India has been continuing to support and promote tea research for the development of Indian tea Industry. The Research Directorate of Tea Board has been entrusted to conduct, coordinate and evaluate tea research nationally through three tea research institutes, namely Darjeeling Tea Research and Development Centre (DTR&DC), Kurseong, Darjeeling, West Bengal; Tea Research Association (TRA), Jorhat, Assam and United Planters Association of Southern India - Tea Research Foundation (UPASI-TRF).The DTR&DC is engaged in the R&D activities to cater the need of the tea industry of Darjeeling while TRA and UPASI are involved to look after the requirement of North East India and South India respectively. TRA and UPASI are, each having seven advisory centres scattered throughout different tea plantation areas in their respective zones. Apart from the above mentioned three tea research institutes, research projects are being given to other national R&D Institutes and Universities to conduct research for the benefit of Indian tea industry.

Tea research in India covers a whole gamut of basic, applied and regulatory research aspects such as plant improvement (breeding and biotechnology), plant production (agronomy and soil science), plant protection (mycology and entomology) and tea quality covering biochemistry, tea tasting and tea processing, electronics and engineering.

The vision of the Directorate is to produce quality tea on sustainable basis involving low inputs and state-of-the-art technology through value research.