Experts at a practical training workshop have stressed on adopting scientific methods, agronomic management and latest technologies in tea cultivation on plain lands to further boost tea production.

“Adoption of scientific methods also improves quality of produced tea,” said Senior Scientific Officer (Entomology) of Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) and its Project Director of Northern Bangladesh Project Agriculturalist Dr. Mohammad Shameem Al Mamun.

Dr. Mamun was conducting the event on ‘Plucking, pruning and pests’ management in tea plantation’ arranged by Bangladesh Tea Research Institute of BTB at village Jhulajhari in Debiganj upazila of Panchagarh on Thursday as the main resource person.

The event was arranged to expand small-scale tea cultivation under the BTB’s ‘Expansion of Small Holding Tea Cultivation in Northern Bangladesh Project’ by reaching the latest scientific methods, technologies and tea related services to farmers’ doorsteps.

Tea Development Officer at BTB’s Panchagarh Regional Office Agriculturalist Md. Amir Hossain also addressed the practical training workshop presided over by local tea garden owner Anwar Hossain Basunia.

A total of 65 small-scale tea growers of the nearby villages of local Shaldanga union in Debiganj upazila of Panchagarh participated in the event.

Agriculturalist Md. Amir Hossain elaborately discussed the plantation, selection and plucking of tea leaves, fertilisation and pruning and tipping and other important issues in tea plantation in the training workshop.

He also discussed management of tea nursery, soil and fertilisers, scientific methods of tea cultivation, management of tea insects, diseases and weeds and practical knowledge on tea cultivation in the event.

Dr Mamun said the plain lands on the Kartoa Valley ecological zone comprising five northern districts of Panchagarh, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur, Nilphamari and Lalmonirhat are highly fertile and favourable for tea cultivation.

“Expanded tea cultivation on the small-scale basis on these plain lands has already unveiled a new horizon of economic prospect for farmers and common people speeding up their economic development in the northern region,” he added.

He called upon participating farmers for expanding small-scale tea cultivation on the plain lands in these five northern districts to earn higher profits than many other crops for faster economic development of the region as a whole.

BK