Summary

Tea is the most important cash crop and plays a significant role in rural development, poverty reduction and food security in Sri Lanka. The outcome of the study will have positive impacts on socio-economic status and the livelihood of the tea growers in the country as growers will have access to tea cultivars resilient to global climate changes. Development of effective conservation strategies to preserve and utilize genetic diversity preserved in old seedling tea populations is important to prevent them forever. This valuable material would provide the base for development of new cultivar to combat with the climate change. This would inevitably lead to increase the production while enhancing the sustainability of the tea sector in Sri Lanka. During the study ancient tea populations with variable diversity would be identified and it would be advantageous to use as a marketing tool to promote Sri Lankan tea in the international market. The information on tea seedling diversity generated from the project in the country would be useful in National policy formulation in decision making in the future land utilization in tea estates. The project would use latest drone technologies to map the diversity of old seedling tea populations and researchers at the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka will have the opportunity to get hands on experience during the project.

Objectives

General Objective:
To develop in-situ and/or ex-situ conservation strategies for old seedling teas (OSTs) in Sri Lanka and utilized in crop improvement programs. 

Specific Objectives:

1. To asses and map the diversity of OSTs in selected tea estate in the Uva region of Sri Lanka.
2. To identify ‘diversity hot spots” in those estates and develop suitable conservation strategies.
3. To evaluate agronomic, phenotypic and biochemical characters of OSTs and utilize selected
accessions in tea breeding programs as parents in crossing programmes.
4. To identify unique OSTs and utilize them in developing estate cultivars to combat with global
climate change.
5. To prepare compressive guidelines for developing conservation strategies for OSTs.

Major Equipment Facilitated by Grant