Tea Board To Launch Mobile App To Monitor Quality Of Green Leaf

GUWAHATI: The Tea Board of India is going hi-tech to monitor the quality of green leaf harvested by growers.

The Tea Board will soon launch a mobile app christened as Chai Sahayak (tea assistant) with separate components for small tea growers and factories that buy green leaf from small and big tea growers and the board’s field officers. The app will be initially available in two languages — English and Assamese.

An official of Tea Board told The Sentinel that the app will be a comprehensive technological tool for better coordination, monitoring, transparency and efficient delivery of services. It will also provide details about the green leaves’ origin.

He said the app will also provide district-wise real-time weather forecast to tea growers to enable them to take up field activities such as the timely application of fertilizer and pesticide spray. The app will provide periodic advisory to growers.

Besides providing daily information of the green leaf price announced by every factory to small growers along with the minimum benchmark price the mobile app will help the stakeholders of the tea industry to convey their problems to the Tea Board through the app. Green leaf can be bought and sold by factories and tea growers through the app.

The plan to launch the mobile app is part of the Tea Board’s initiatives to prevent the production of sub-standard tea. In a major crackdown on unfair practices prevalent in the tea industry, the board recently canceled licenses of 18 factories in Assam which were not in operation for many years.

On another hand, the Tea Board has also started its offensive against factories not producing tea according to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) standards. After directing Apeejay Tea to destroy 1.2 lakh kg of tea waste which the firm had claimed as tea, the Tea Board recently issued a show cause notice to a bought leaf factory, Rhino Greens, whose tea samples have failed to comply with the Food Safety and Standards Regulations (FSSR).

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