PUTTABONG TUKVAR TEA ESTATE, Darjeeling - first garden in North East India to start in nursery and plantation of composite plant.
A composite tea plant is the union of a vigorous rootstock and a scion of desirable character / quality developed by cleft grafting of the cuttings of both stocks and scions clones in the nursery prior to planting the cuttings. This is an attractive proposition to increase yield of low yielding, but quality clones without decreasing their potentiality for tea making quality. The clones recommended for Darjeeling are mostly China hybrids and basically low yielder. But their quality specially flavour is unique giving a special characteristics to Darjeeling tea. There is a scope to increase the yield of the quality clones recommended for Darjeeling by cleft grafting them on vigorous and high yielding rootstock. In tea, this is an established fact that the quality of the scions is not affected by grafting on a vigorous rootstock. It is also reported that the success of the grafting is directly related to vigour of the rootstock and inversely related to the vigour of the scion. However, a systematic study will be necessary to find out successful combination of suitable stock and scions for Darjeeling, initially in the nursery. There after the combinations, successful in the nursery, should be tried in the field to compare their yield performance in comparison to the scion clones on their own roots without grafting. The combinations giving significantly higher yield than the scion clones without grafting can be selected for large scale plantation in Darjeeling.
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