Implementing Agency:
Department For International Development (DFIDEA)

Project Code: 031-500-014	Start Date: 30-Jul-87	End Date: 31/03/1991
Commitment: £270 307	Status: Completed	Type of Funding: Bilateral - TC

Project Objectives:
As a follow up to the initial TC programme at TRFK carried out by a consultant between 1983 and 1986, DFID funded a collaborative project between TRFK and NRI. Under these arrangements, a TCO biochemist/plant physiologist was seconded to TRFK from October 1988 to March 1991. The Terms of Reference for his assignment were as follows: purchase and install necessary equipment and train staff in its use set up a research programme to study the plant physiological aspect of withering from the bush onward. Areas to be studied include changes in leaf water potential and their effect on water loss before plucking and during withering changes in respiration and the effect of ethylene. The overall objective being to develop a method of withering to reduce factory time required for withering, while maintaining tea quality carry out factory experiments in conjunction with the tea industry to measure water loss before and during the withering process , and the effect of preharvest factors on the behaviour of the leaf during the subsequent processing in conjunction with the Head Chemist, oversee experiments monitoring the variation of catechin content of tea bushes under various conditions, and assist in general manufacturing experiments, and a subsidiary role may involve collaboration with other TRFK departments on general crop environment studies, in order to establish a research programme of plant physiology from the bush to finished tea. This would concentrate on analysis of why certain clones yield very highly and how to manage such leaf during withering.

Intended Outputs:
R1644(R) Report on a monitoring mission to the Tea Research Foundation of Kenya 11-15 March 1991. Project reports Final report