Tea, coffee and cocoa are the three important non-alcoholic beverages from nature's rich storehouse of plant resources. Of the three, tea is the oldest known and the most popular beverage.
This profusely illustrated book, written in an easy-to-understand style, gives an overview of the tea trade especially the role of Indian tea industry in the world tea market. The book also focusses on the history, charac-teristics of the plant, genetic improvement of the bush, cultivation, different types of tea and their manufacture, therapeutic properties, and nutritive value of the beverage.
Dr Bala Subramaniam (b.1952) did his M.Sc. (1973)from Kurukshetra University and Ph.D. (1988) in Botany from Delhi University. At present he is working as a Scientist with the Publications & Information Directorate, CSIR, New Delhi, and has written many articles on useful plants for The Wealth of Indiaan encyclopaedia of Indian raw materials. He has coauthored with Dr Virendra Kumar the book entitled Chromosome Atlas of Flowering Plants of the Indian Subcontinent (two volumes). He has also 25 research papers to his credit.
Tea is a gift of nature and has become the most gracious of temperance drinks and is one of the chief joys of life. It is consumed by a wider section of people and satiates their palate demands. It is one of the important agro-industrial crops of India and sustains the economy of a large number of local people where this crop is under cultivation. In fact, tea is one among the top ten foreign exchange earners for our country. At the same time the quality Indian teas are much sought after and are relished by the beverage consumers throughout the world.
However, scientific information on this important beverage crop at a popular level is scant. The purpose of the present book is to cull the available sources and present the information on different facets of this plantation crop in a lucid form. The article on Camellia in the revised volume 3a of The Wealth of India- Raw Materials has been one of the important sources of information for the present book. The book will be of use to laymen, industrialists, school and college students, progressive farmers and others.
The twin objectives of the tea industry are to achieve a high productivity besides maintaining a good quality. There is an interplay of a number of factors that effect both the yield and quality. A thorough understanding of the crop plant such as its range of adaptability, selection of site, genetic potentials of the bush, appropriate methods of propagation, training of plants, management of cultural inputs to achieve optimum results, maintenance of the bush, plucking techniques and processing, is imperative for successful tea growing and manufacturing. The utility of tea, not only as a bever-age but also from its medicinal properties and the diverse byproducts that are obtained from it have also been highlighted. The relationship between the production, domestic consumption and exports has been drawn. The trend of tea exports, the different export markets and the revenue earned has been included. The statistical data has been provided up to the year 1993, as the data for the year 1994 was not available at the time of printing.
Iin the long history of human civilization, man has selected and Limproved three important non-alcoholic beverages from nature's rich storehouse of plant resources the extract of tea-leaves, the extract of coffee-beans and the extract of cocoa-beans. Tea, coffee and cocoa are true stimulants and have been satisfying the palate demands of human beings for centuries. Of the three beverages, tea is the oldest-known and is now the most-popular beverage. It leads the other two in the total amount of beverage consumed, and it is less expensive compared to coffee and cocoa. Today, the plant is cultivated on a larger scale compared to coffee and cocoa being adapted to a wide range of agroclimatic conditions.
The tea-plant and the tea-drinking habit were exclusively Chinese initially. But the tea drinking has undergone changes to suit the styles and requirements of countries of its later adoption. Different techniques for processing coupled with consumer acceptance have led to the development of a wide variety of tea which varies in appearance, colour, briskness, aroma, etc. to satisfy every consumer taste within and outside the country of origin.
Tea is unique in that, besides being an agricultural crop, it has also provided an industrial base. The cultivation, maintenance, harvesting and processing of tea are labourintensive and provide a regular employment to millions. Tea industry is one of the chief foreign-exchange earners in some of the third world countries.
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