SRI LANKA (CEYLON)
| ADAWATTE TEA RUBBER FORESTRY ESTATE
SRI LANKA (CEYLON) |
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TEA Tea tree ( CAMELLIA SINENSIS ) | ||||||||||||||||||
Tea originated in China in 2737 BC with Chinese emperor Shen Nung experimenting with the wild tea tree. Tea was planted in commercial scale in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in 1867 by Scotsman James Taylor planting the first tea estate with 20 acres.when the coffee blight destroyed the entire coffee plantations.. However it was Sri lanka then known as Ceylon,that made tea famous in the 19th and 20th century producing excellent variations in the taste, quality ,character and appearance made ceylon tea every consumers favorite tea. |
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Adawatte is situated in the Uva District on the eastern slopes of the central mountains of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). With an elevation ranging from 700-1200m above sea level and has a long history to produce very famous teas which is unique to Adawatte for its distinctively smooth tea with an intense flower-like fragrance and a wonderfully refreshing green odour. Adawatte is famous for its large leaf varieties or grades in the form of Orange Pekoe (OP), Pekoe, Broken Orange Pekoe 1 (BOP1), Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe (FBOP), Broken Orange Pekoe Special (BOP-SP) has fetched premium tall prices at the Colombo, Sri Lanka Tea auctions for its tea thus resulting in recording a all time highest price for Orange Pekoe (OP) in 2002 and again in 2008. Also an all time highest price for its Broken Orange Pekoe 1 (BOP1) in 2007 and again in 2008.
Resulting in Adawatte tea estate achieving the No 1 spot in Uva high and Uva medium grown elevations which has about 100 tea processing centers (Factories) for the season January-December 2007 at the Colombo Sri Lanka Tea auctions. (The largest tea auction in the world) In other words it emerged as the best estate in Uva district.
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Tea is a perennial tree which, under natural conditions will grow to a height of about thirty feet. Pruning and plucking however, bring it to a bush form and it is then grown for leaf. It is to a large extend deprived of the power of flowering and fruiting and its energy directed to flushing , or the production of new shoots. | |||||||||||||||
The firs step in attempting to cultivate tea as a crop was to modify the habit of growth from tree to a bush and this was archived by resorting to some, form of pruning and it is the only means of arresting the progress of the bush in to a reproductive phase and into a vegitatative phase. |
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For the production of black tea certain chemicals changes are necessary, and these are brought about by expressing the cell contents of leaf on it's surface and oxidizing them in presence of oxygen. The fundamental objective in manufacturing of black tea is to produce these changes and all the processes other than shifting or grading are primarily concerned to this process. |
It has been estimated that tea transperatation accounts approxmentately for equivalent of 900mm of rain each year. Tea is grown in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) with a annual average rain fall of 1500mm or above a year on altitudes from sea level to over 2100 Metres. | |||||||||||||||||
Tea requires a deep, permeable well drained soil. It is often grown on tropical red earth soil. Tea can be grown successfully on solis that have a ph of 4.5 but should never exceed above ph of 6 - 6.5.( The strength of the acidity in soil is called its "pH"valu which denotes the concentration of hydrogen ion in the soils solution) |
The most modern method of planting is vetatative propagation. The aim of V.P is to standardize yields and quality of their height levels and to produce clones with a degree of resistance to certain pest and diseases. The cuttings taken from selected bushes for vegetative propagation will be grown to a plant within one year and planted in the fields. These young plants when given the proper care will form into bushes fast. | |||||||||||||||||
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