Edible Products. 



314 



[April, 1910. 



cereals, and even with tropical plants 

 similar to tea, such as coffee and cocoa, 

 a single individual harvesting at one 

 period of the year, but it is continued 

 week by week through many mouths of 

 the season. Again, it is not merely a 

 question of taking the crop from the 

 earth such as it is and being content 

 with it, but it is one of choosing how 

 much to take and how much to leave. 



It is every planter's endeavour to 

 reap from his bushes the greatest amount 

 of good leaf possible, and to enable this 

 to be done it has been found that better 

 results in certain districts are made by 

 sacrificing a certain amount of crop at 

 the beginning of the year. It is an easy 

 matter to pluck off the tea shoots as they 

 appear in the bushes, but if this is done 

 freely at the inception of the season the 

 bush does not flush in the same way as 

 if it was allowed to grow freely for the 

 first month or so. This is one of the 

 greatest points at which the Scientific 

 Department has laboured since its estab- 

 lishment, and it is agreed that the saving 

 of the bush at the beginning of the 

 season is one of the greatest preventa- 

 tives of deterioration, while it is at the 

 same time a factor of first importance in 

 regard to the immediate crop. Not only 

 does care in long and luxuriant growth 

 at the beginning of the season ensure 

 thick straight wood for subsequent 

 pruning, but it enables the bush to 

 establish its mass of young growing root- 

 lets, and it maintains a freer communi- 

 cation between the stems and the roots. 



Plucking itself is as a rule a question 

 of labour, and with a short labour force 

 it is very much easier to pluck a bush 

 hard than it is to allow free growth and 

 to check it as desired. But here the 

 question of close plucking intervenes, 

 and it is now pretty well accepted by 

 planters of intelligence that the secret 

 of quality in tea, outside the question of 

 manufacture, is in catching the leaf 

 when it is young, as the shoots then 

 contain greater percentages of the 

 intrinsic essentials which go to make 

 quality. Close plucking, however, as it 

 was followed in the most north-easterly 

 districts of Assam, and which tends to 

 give the finest quality tea, has had to 

 be given up because it was found that 

 the system was too severe on the bushes. 

 This system, which it is understood was 

 called the Sadya Road System, consisted 

 in plucking every shoot, no matter how 

 much grown, as soon as it appeared, and 

 it is easy to perceive that such a system 

 was bound to tax the bush to its utmost. 

 On the other hand, there is no reason 

 why similar leaf to that obtained by the 

 Sadya Road system should not be got by 



leaving the shoots to grow to a certain 

 extent, and this is the standard to which 

 planters are approaching now. Leaf 

 only contains its different virtues during 

 a certain period of life, and, that once 

 reached, no good can be gained by 

 leaving leaf on the bush once growing 

 conditions are established. 



The handling of leaf after it has been 

 plucked is also a question which has 

 exercised the minds of planters, and it 

 is customary now to pay an amount of 

 attention to the delivery of leaf in the 

 factory in first-class condition that not 

 so many years ago would have been 

 considered absurd. It was at one time 

 a question of crop ; it is now quality first 

 and crop if it is to be got. 



Pests and Blights. 



But if the Scientific Department has 

 conferred upon the industry great 

 benefit in the question of pruning and 

 pluaking, it has perhaps more than all 

 justified its existence in work which it 

 has carried on with regard to the treat- 

 ment and mitigation of insect pests and 

 blights. In this part of the work the 

 Department has had a special field of 

 enquiry to investigate which it has been 

 able to do with the exactness and com- 

 pleteness which are the attributes of 

 Science. There is no doubt that in the 

 case of the Tea Industry blights have 

 threatened to be one of the most serious 

 checks to its successful development, and 

 we have in the history of coffee growing 

 in Ceylon an example of what insect 

 blight can do in actually exterminating 

 a large and influential agricultural 

 industry. The Indian Tea Industry has 

 been cruelly attacked by more than one 

 blight, but up to the present time it has 

 fortunately showed no signs of succumb- 

 ing to any of the many perils to which 

 it has been liable in its short existence. 



It is recognised, of course, with all 

 plants which are rescued from their 

 jungle existence, which are brought into 

 cultivation and closely associated with 

 the other, that the dangers from indi- 

 vidual blight and pests are intensified. 

 Not only has the Tea bush been re- 

 covered from its natural surroundings 

 in the jungle, but it has been forced to 

 change its habits, and to a very great 

 extent to outrage the system arranged 

 for it by nature, so that this very change 

 of habit tends to make the plant more 

 liable to all diseases to which it is pre- 

 disposed. Also the very fact that the 

 plant is more intensively cultivated and 

 more carefully treated renders it the 

 more liable to disease, in the same way 

 that any living thing which is cultivated 

 for a special purpose becomes more 

 delicate constitutionally. 



