Project development assessment: the application of plant tissue culture techniques to the propagation and breeding of tea in Ind

Summary

Tea is a very important crop not only in Indonesia, but also in a number of other countries in the world. Table 1 shows production of tea while Table 2 shows consumption of tea in 64 countries or regions of the world. Table 3 shows tea production and the areas devoted to tea in Indonesia by the three production sectors. Table 4 shows past trends for the average price of tea on the international market.

During the next five years the Indonesian government plans to extend plantings of tea by 20,000 hectares. At a planting rate of 10,000 to 12,000 plants per hectare, there is a need to produce as many as 240 million plants during the next five years. Production of such a large number of plants from cuttings is not possible due to the shortage of superior stock plants and the slow growth of those plants. If superior clonal material is not available it is likely that smallholders will continue to make new plantings from seed, which will produce lower yielding plants.

There is, however the potential to produce the very large number of superior plants required for this project through the application of plant tissue culture techniques. Traditional methods of propagation are inadequate to supply high yielding plants in the required numbers. Tissue culture techniques provide the potential to produce the required numbers of plants and to breed new improved varieties.

This project is designed specifically to improve the socio-economic position of the smallholder tea grower in Indonesia. Smallholders own less than 2 ha per grower. The yield per hectare in the smallholder tea sector is about 931 kilograms, compared to 1766 kg/ha in the private commercial sector and 2083 kg/ha in the government sector. One reason for the very low rate of productivity of tea in the smallholder sector is that the plantings used by smallholders have usually been made from seed or inferior clones with low yield potential and low resistance to disease.