Plantation Crops

Planting material and plant propagation in tea

Seed propagation
Seed is convenient to use as planting material in tea. Till today tea is generally propagated from seed.
But during recent years to use of high yielding clonal material = Hence Vegetative propagation. Tea is out breeding, and will not produce true seeds because of sterility. Genetically it is heterogeneous for potential yield, disease resistance and manufacturing quality.

Vegetative propagation
Different vegetative propagation methods can be adopted in tea:
1) By budding

2) By grafting on rootstocks

3) By layering

4) By cutting = popular method of vegetative propagation.

Vegetative propagation by budding, grafting or by layering are too labourious to adopt.

Grafting
It is practiced for successful propagation of high yielding drought - susceptible clone used as scion on to drought - hardy clone used as root stock. In south India nursery grafts have been made using high yielding clones such as UPASI -3, UPASI – 8 and UPASI -17 as scions and drought hardy clones UPASI-2, UPASI-6, UPASI-9, UPASI-10 , UPASI-24,ATK-1, SA-6 and TRI 2025 as root stocks.
In view of the grafting success, survival, graft vigour of the composite plants and yield the following graft combinations have been recommended for commercial exploitation in southern India.

Vegetative propagation by cuttings
Commercial method of propagation is through single node cutting (Semi hard wood cuttings is preferred method). Elite clone should be selected with desirable characters like yield, quality, quick recovery etc.,