Tea Board-ISRO likely to tie-up for tea garden monitoring

Kolkata, Jun 07 (UNI) To monitor the tea gardens and its resources more efficiently, the Tea Board is likely to tie up with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Tea Board sources told UNI today that the monitoring had become crucial with the view of the massive re-plantation exercise that would be taken up.

It involves activity over Rs 2.12 lakh hectares out of the Rs 5.26 lakh hectares under tea cultivation in Asom, Dooars and Darjeeling in West Bengal, and Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south.

The Board, had organised a few meetings with IIT-Kharagpur on the project called "Tea Area Development and Management'', where remote sensing and Geographical Indication Systems (GIS) would be used.

IIT Kharagpur runs the regional remote sensing centre (RRSC).

A core group, which would be formed after a final round of meeting with ISRO, would work out the modalities and the finer points.

The project would involve Tea Board, the Tea Research Association, the industry and RRSC.

''The project would be funded under the 11th Five-Year Plan, which commenced in April 2007,'' Tea Board Chairman Basudeb Bannerjee said.

The mapping with the help of GIS mapping technology would generate garden-wise data on the actual extent of area under tea cultivation and their location.

It would also bring out data on the possibility of new plantation or for alternative cropping.

The remote sensing would identify location of small growers and bought-leaf factories and establish a linkage between them and Board and other agencies.

The cost of the project was yet to be finalised and be funded as a research and development project, sources said.

UNI