Tea planters in Assam excited over Baba Ramdev’s research on green tea

GUWAHATI: With Yoga guru Baba Ramdev announcing he is doing research in green tea, tea planters in Assam are seeing huge opportunity in the marketing prowess of Patanjal Ayurveda.

Bidyananda Barkakoty, Vice Chairman of Tea Board of India said, “We welcome Baba Ramdev’s remark on Tea during his speech at the inaugural ceremony of Herbal and Mega Food Park at Balipara in Assam on Sunday.

Baba Ramdev said that “Patanjali Ayurved has not given much thought on Black tea (CTC (crush-tear-curl), Orthodox tea etc) but Green tea is good for health and has taken steps for research on Green tea”.

Barkakoty added that more than 100 small tea growers in Assam are producing specialty teas like Green tea, white tea, hand crafted tea, organic tea, traditional tea etc. They are doing it at the cottage industry level and some of them have also been able to export their teas. “But many of them are finding difficulty in marketing their teas. We appeal to Patanjali Ayurved to help the small tea growers in marketing their teas.”

Assam mainly produces CTC tea and 90% of Assam’s production is black tea.

Barkakoty who is also an adviser of to a tea planters’ body, North Eastern Tea Association (NETA) informed that they will shortly meet Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna and explain in detail about the health benefits of Black Tea. “There are many research findings worldwide to prove that Black tea has health benefits as good as Green tea. We will invite them to Tocklai for an in-depth study on tea. Tocklai is more than 100 years old and the world’s largest tea research institute.”