Study of Tea Pests of Temi Tea Estate, South Sikkim,India.

Abstract

Tea is the agricultural product of leaves, leaf buds and internodes ofCamelliasinensisplant, prepared and cured by various methods. It is a woody perennial plantgrown as a monoculture. It provides a stable microclimate and a suitable habitat fornumber of pests and diseases in different parts of plant in different seasons withdifferent damage pattern and intensity.A random questionnaire survey and interview was made with the experienced person,TTE officials working at the garden and personal visit and collection resulted8species of Arthropod pestsand 2 predator species belonging to 8orders and 16different families.Atotal of 205 species,were collected.125 specimens collected during autumn and 80during monsoon season. Maximum species belonged from Aphididae, Formicidae andThripidae families and minimum species from Scarabaeidaeand Chrysomelidaefamilies. Hemiptera was found to be the most dominant Order with the value of0.2683, likewise Coleoptera was found to be recessive Order with the value of 0.0244.The Species Diversity was 1.662 with the evenness of 0.807 for autumn season andwas 1.798 with the evenness of 0.968 for monsoon season, while the CommunityDominance was 0.9121.Out of them, Thrips (Scirtothripssp.), Aphids (Toxoptera aurantii) was considered asa major enemy of the tea. It was also reported that tea plant suffered from naturalcalamity i.e. hailstones affecting the tea production in the fiscal year 2009.TTE has been graded as Organic Tea Estate, from April 2008 by Institute of Marketlogy (IMO) of Switzerland, and has been adopting traditional synthetic pesticide,cattle manure, vermin compost as well as Neem based botanicals for the control of thepests. The Estate has been exporting tea overseas. Many European nations and Japanhave shownpreference for tea produced by adopting organic manuring method. It issuggested to monitor the pests and disease complex regularly and use IPM techniquesas far as possible.