and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society. 



■m 



TEA SEED: ITS SELECTION AND 

 GROWTH. 



For choice, tea seed should be selected, not 

 from plots that have been left for seed, but from 

 seed gardens that have been planted with the 

 sole object of raising seed, and that have never 

 been touched by knife or sullied by vicious deep 

 hoe. We have in our mind's eye a seed garden 

 that answers to all requirements essential to a 

 hybridised initiative plant. It lies in the Mikir 

 hills and is entirely isolated from contact with 

 any plant devoted to commercial purposes. The 

 smallest mature plant on this property is not 

 less than twenty feet in height, and the highest 

 nearly forty. The seed from this plantation is 

 invariably sound and is in strong demand. The 

 area bears some koroi trees which are the re- 

 mains of the original forests, and it is under 

 these the largest and most exuberant plants 

 are found. This is, in our opinion, the most 

 thorough example of what a seed garden should 

 be of all the seed gardens and plots wo have 

 been privileged to visit. It is essentially an 

 ordinated forest of tea, with little or no under- 

 growth and thin interposing grass ; practically 

 free from 90per cent, of the blights prominent 

 in cultivated areas of tea. It is cleared in Oc- 

 tober each year, by a very perfunctory clod hoe, 

 to facilitate the collection of the seed, but 

 otherwise left to nature. All high class plant is 

 delicate, and will not flower or set such good 

 seed, if touched by knife or hoe except on 

 strictly protective lines. The higher the 

 class of plant, the longer it will take to reach 

 maturity and to seed ; but it bears some 

 immunity from blights under all circum- 

 stances, and herein lies the crux of the whole 

 question : the yield of tea given by the high 

 class plant is superior in quality to that ren- 

 dered by any hybrid, no matter how robust. We 

 have experimented crucially on this point, and 

 we are quite satisfied that tea manufactured 

 from Lushai or Assam indigenous will command 

 six pies more than that manufactured from ad- 

 jacent areas of hybridised plant. The same 

 should apply to Naga plant, but we cannot speak 

 decidedly of Manipuri. The greater the differ- 

 ence in the class of plant, the greater the differ- 

 ence in the quality, bulk for bulk, and the larger 

 the size of the leaf the greater the yield in con- 

 tiguous areas. A garden of inferior hybrid is, 

 prima facie, handicapped, both in quantity and 

 quality when compared with some of marked 

 superiority in class of plant. A good manager 

 will make satisfactory profits off a well 

 equipped hybrid garden, but a fool can scarcely 

 make a mistako on an underpowered garden of 

 high class plant. We do not for a moment lose 

 sight of the value of soil and climate, but in- 

 sist that the initiative of quality in plant is a val- 

 uable asset in the balance sheet of any estate. 



IN- ABSOLUTELY SOUND SEED 



the exterior brown integument or capsule should 

 always adhere to the seed. In all cases where this 

 follicle fails to attach itself to the seed, the 

 germination is more readily affected by cli- 

 matic influences and subterraneous blights 

 (and there are many such). Heavy seeds is 

 not ipso facto good seed, any more than light 



seed is dc facto bad. A largo percentage of 

 sound seed plucked in a dry December, though 

 light, has the follicle adhering to the seed, 

 and all this— if not carelessly treated— is cer- 

 tain of germination. Of one hundred seeds 

 shelled and planted, fifty of which had the 

 follicle adhering and of which fifty were 

 without this protection, forty-nine of the first 

 category threw up healthy plants, while only 

 two of the latter showed above ground at 

 all, and one of these failed to reach matu- 

 rity. The percentages of unshelled seed under 

 these headings is difficult of estimation, as 

 cracking and replacing the fragments be- 

 comes essential ; but in this phase the for- 

 mer gave an effective of 94 pdr cent, while 

 the latter showed only 42. If each garden 

 could set apart a small area of the very best 

 plant procurable for the purpose of propagating 

 on high class hybrid, the standard of plant on 

 individual gardens would undoubtedly improve 

 slowly and steadily. The plea of the 



ADVISABILITY OF INTERCHANGE 



of seeds, on the basis of a similar status 

 adopted with regard to cereals, applies 

 but in an extremely modified form to 

 the tea industry, as it is never, except possibly 

 (and that remotely) in the case of transplants, 

 planted on the same area and soil, and the 

 variation in surroundings and soil, between 

 a seed garden and its proximate culti- 

 vated area, is quite sufficient to foil the most 

 minute statistician, in appreciation of a valid 

 and tangible depreciation in the areas devoted 

 for comparison on the issue of mutation of seed 

 alone. We must make it quite clear as to what 

 we look upon as the essentials of a good seed 

 garden, and to do this, we cannot do better than 

 postulate the steps requisite to the effective 

 development of such an area. The best indige- 

 nous seed should be procured and if possible 

 from two or three sources, and this should be 

 most carefully germinated and planted in shaded 

 nurseries, not less than twelve inches apart, 

 shade being essential to the class of plant we 

 have premised. Indigenous plant is shy of 

 setting either flower or fruit and this can only 

 be induced by assisting nature in her own 

 methods, viz., by natural shade from selected 

 trees, of which Albizzia stipulata and Leguminosai 

 generally are types, and by the most careful ap- 

 plication of well-tried manures, in very moderate 

 quantities, and without in any way injuring the 

 root processes. The seed garden referred to is 

 never cultivated in the ordinary acceptance of 

 the term, but despite this the branches have at 

 times to be supported to facilitate the collection 

 of the seed. One peculiarity seems worth men- 

 tioning, that in this small forest of tea, only six- 

 teen acres in extent, there were no less than 

 nine swarms of bees and the proprietor consi- 

 dered these a necessary adjunct for success for 

 free fertilisation. Should indigenous seed not be 

 selected, but a high class hybrid be decided on, 

 absolute isolation becomes imperative, and the 

 beet sites for selection undoubtedly lie at the 

 bases of valleys in the adjacent hills. A site for 

 a seed clearance should have a warm, equable 

 temperature and be well protected on the north 

 and east, as well as screened on the west, — Indian 

 Planters' Gazette, Oct. 17. 



