India turns to AI and satellites to modernise tea farming

India is turning to artificial intelligence and satellite technology to tackle some of the tea industry's biggest challenges, from detecting crop stress and pests to estimating yields.

The Tea Board of India has signed a tripartite agreement with the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, to develop an AI-based system for monitoring tea plantations across the country.

The project, called ‘CHAAYANKAN — Comprehensive AI-based Geospatial Data Analytics for Tea Plantation Monitoring’, will use satellite and drone imagery, ground-level observations, weather data and information on insects to build a technology-driven monitoring system for India's tea sector.


The three institutions signed the Memorandum of Understanding on August 27. The project will run from April 2026 to March 2029 and cover major tea-growing regions.

Under the initiative, AI and machine-learning models will be developed to automatically identify and map tea-growing areas. The system will also use hyperspectral data to detect biotic and abiotic stress in plantations, potentially enabling earlier identification of crop health problems.

Another key focus will be forecasting major pests and diseases affecting tea gardens. The project will also seek to estimate green-leaf yields using hyperspectral indices generated from satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data.

The move could help address a persistent challenge for the tea industry: obtaining timely and reliable information on plantation health and expected output across large and geographically dispersed growing areas.

For tea producers, more accurate monitoring could improve pest and disease management and help optimise farm-level interventions. At the industry level, better yield estimates could improve production planning and provide policymakers with more reliable data.

The Tea Board will provide technical and field-level support through its existing administrative network and facilitate the integration of ground observations with the satellite and other datasets.

The project is also expected to create a large repository of geospatial and field data on India's tea plantations. This could support future research, policy formulation and planning for the sector.

The collaboration brings together the Tea Board's field network, ISRO's remote-sensing capabilities and NIT Rourkela's research expertise in artificial intelligence and data analytics.

For an industry increasingly dealing with productivity, climate and crop-health challenges, CHAAYANKAN could mark a shift from conventional plantation monitoring towards real-time, data-led management of tea cultivation.