A three-day training session focusing on “Enhancing Climate Smart Resilience in the Tea Sector” kickstarted, this morning, at the Farmers Training School of the Food and Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (FAREI) in Wooton.
The training will be dispensed by a team of consultants from the Tea Research Institute of Kenya. The objective of the training is to cater for capacity building to improve and sustain tea cultivation and production in Mauritius. The training will focus on the following themes: resilience, climate smart, fertiliser, and soil health and fertility.
In his address on the occasion, the Senior Chief Executive of the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security, Mr Medha Gunputh, highlighted that Government was making relentless efforts to revive the tea industry. He urged all planters to avail of all the facilities and schemes being extended by the Government to engage in tea production.
He also expressed gratitude to the European Union for providing Kenyan expertise to help Mauritius overcome the challenges it was facing regarding tea production. Besides, he informed that the Food and Agriculture Organisation was conducting a study for an inclusive Business Model for the tea sector.
Furthermore, Mr Medha Gunputh stressed that the next objectives to boost the sector were to replace the old plantations and to improve soil fertility.
Also present on the occasion, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the FAREI, Mrs Micheline Seenevassen Pillay, stated that the tea sector had regained its economic importance, and proposals had been made to relaunch the sector. She observed that tea had been continuously cultivated for decades and that there was now a need to review the fertiliser recommendation as well as to improve tea production and sustain soil fertility and tea plantation.
On that note, she emphasised that the experts would analyse the tea sector and provide recommendations for sustainable tea production in view of sustainable soil fertility in existing and new tea growing areas, adopt climate smart actions and technologies to promote and sustain production, integrate fertiliser management programme and novel products as a substitute to chemical fertiliser, and revise fertiliser recommendations based on the local soil characteristics.
