PAKISTAN is among the top ten countries in tea consumption. Tea is cultivated here, but the bulk of the consumption is met through imports. In 2007, four million kg of tea was produced locally.

With the onset of liberalisation, our tea industry is on the threshold of new international competition and there is an urgent need to focus on retaining and improving the competitive advantage. This can be achieved only by improving productivity and quality, containing the cost of production, enhancing the marketing ability and value addition.

In this context, production of organic tea, a value-added product, assumes considerable significance. While demand for conventional tea is declining, the market for organic tea is rapidly growing ever since its introduction in the late 1980’s. During the last decade, global consumption of organic tea has gone up by about 10 per cent. The price of this tea is three to four times higher than the conventional quality, making it highly attractive for the producers, despite increase in cost of production and low productivity of organic fields.

Organic tea production started in 1985 in Swat and it gradually spread to mountainous northern areas. The concept of organic tea was introduced here due to the intervention of organic food buyers in the US. During the last decade, the tea industry here has gained considerable experience in production of organic tea. Its production witnessed a 20-fold increase. Being a producer of high quality tea in Swat, Mansehra, Malakand and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan could gain by meeting the growing world demand.

Organic tea production faces several problems in cultivation and marketing. Adoption of soil and water conservation/drainage measures is an integral part of organic tea culture. In the northern areas, plantation of vetiver grass has been extremely useful in preventing soil erosion in tea gardens. In the newly planted areas, mulching can be done with Guatemala grass. Maintaining live mulch by growing grasses and legumes in large vacant patches in mature tea field and new clearing is also advocated.

During transition from chemical-based agriculture to natural farming, a decline in productivity has been reported. In an experiment on the impact of avoidance of chemical fertilisers and organic manures, it was fond that the decline in tea yield was 10 per cent in the first year, 20 per cent in the second and 40 per cent in the third and fourth years.

The experience in the northern mountainous areas on organic tea culture has also been more or less similar with the exception of fourth year, when the decline in yield was only 20 per cent. However, it has been reported that establishment of organic tea right from planting gave more desirable results.

The experience in the northern areas was different in that there has been no appreciable depression in crop when conventional field were converted to organic fields and organic manures like compost and oil cakes applied. The recommendation on manuring of organic tea fields under the agro climatic conditions of northern areas is given below:

In tea gardens, organic matter is added through shade tree litters and toppings, tea leaf litter, tea pruning and weeds. In the north-east of the country, the common shade trees in tea fields are wild Kikar, Shah Baloot, and Chir. While in the north-eastern side, it is Greavillea robusta. Caliandra species are now being planted as shade trees in organic tea fields. The annual average addition of organic matter through leaf fall from shade trees is estimated between 2.5-5.0 tons of dry matter per hectare.

Requirement of potassium is usually met by addition of wood ash, but in high yielding fields deficiency of potash has been noticed and this has to be rectified by the application of a mined product, which contain potassium as well as magnesium. Requirement of phosphorous can be met by application of rock phosphate. Zinc is the only micro-nutrient tea plant requires in large quantity and its deficiency is noticed in all organic tea fields.

The pH of the soil could be maintained at 5.0 by application of dolomitic lime once in a pruning cycle, based on soil pH, rainfall and yield. Dolomite also serves as a source of magnesium.

Regular application of compost and other organic manures result in an increase in earthworm populations in the field. The epigenics are used in converting organic wastes into vermin-compost. A burrowing species of earthworm creates a drilosphere apart from helping in compost production. Bio-fertilisers are capable of providing nitrogen and phosphorous to the plants.

However, many of these bio-fertilisers used in the field crops are not suitable for application in the acidic tea soils. It is necessary to identify acid tolerant strains of these bacteria and fungi for enriching the tea soils. Association of vesicular abruscular mycorrhizae (VAM) with tea roots has been established and higher influx of P has been reported in tea plants in the nursery when their roots were inoculated with VAM.

Tea plants suffer from infestation of several insect and mite pests too. The parasitoids and predators, active in the ecosystem exert a certain amount of natural control of tea pests.

Regulation of shade plays an important role in the control of dry weather sucking pests such as mites and thrips. Intensive removal of stubs (stalks) will be helpful in controlling the incidence of American boll worm, since these stalks left after plucking harbor large number eggs of the pest. Leaf folding caterpillars can be manually removed while harvesting. Manual removed while harvesting. Manual removal of caterpillars and pupae will go a long way in reducing the incidence of the looper, caterpillar, and slug caterpillar. Light traps can be very effective in attracting the months of these caterpillars. Removal of earth runs and affected wood is necessary to reduce termite attach.

Production of organic tea is expensive in view of the high labour requirement. The inputs of organic manures, bio-fertilisers and materials used for pests control are also expensive. The production cost of this tea is at least 15-25 per cent more than conventional tea. However, the demand for organic tea is bound to increase.

The European market for organic products has grown by 25 per cent in the last 10 years. The countries with major markets for organic tea do not domestically produce it and therefore the demand is bound to grow rapidly. Organic tea is directly marketed but there is a need to develop marketing strategy to boost export.

As part of world organic standards and inspection procedures, it is necessary to check whether the basic welfare requirements of workers are met.