Darjeeling Tea Research Articles (Page 1)

This research paper examines the transformative potential of integrating Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) with Geographical Indication (GI) branding, which can significantly contribute to empowering smallholder farmers economically, socially, and environmentally. FPOs unite small farmers to pool resources, enhance market linkages, and provide better bargaining power. At the same time, GI certification authenticates products with specific regional and cultural characteristics, ensuring premium pricing, consumer trust, and global market recognition. The study analyzes the opportunities and challenges arising from this synergy in India, where a robust GI framework and an emerging FPO ecosystem exist. GI branding offers FPOs opportunities such as premium pricing, access to export markets, preservation of cultural heritage, and promotion of sustainable practices, as evidenced by examples like Darjeeling tea, Alphonso mango, and Nagpur orange. However, challenges such as high certification costs, complex regulatory processes, limited farmer awareness, weak institutional support, and supply chain inefficiencies pose significant hurdles to this integration. Using a mixed-methods approach, the paper explores these issues through a conceptual framework, empirical case studies, and policy analysis. Proposed recommendations include training, subsidies, simplified registration processes, and robust enforcement against counterfeit products. The study provides a roadmap for policymakers, FPOs, and stakeholders to strengthen rural economies through GI. It advocates for the FPO-GI synergy for sustainable agriculture and inclusive development, while highlighting the need for future research in areas like cross-country comparisons and digital marketing. This paper is a significant step toward flexible and equitable agricultural systems prioritizing smallholder farmers.

ABSTRACT Indigenous entrepreneurship has emerged as a new area of research in the domain of entrepreneurship. Indigenous entrepreneurship is deemed to be essential to address the developmental needs of the millions of Indigenous people who have been disadvantaged and marginalized throughout history. However, there is limited empirical work offering an in-depth understanding of how Indigenous entrepreneurship in a region evolves and how it promotes agricultural development, which is central to facilitating the sustainable development of the nature-dependent Indigenous communities. In this study, we use qualitative research to analyse how Indigenous entrepreneurship centred around the production and marketing of tea by the natives of Darjeeling region (a globally renowned tea-producing region in the eastern Himalayas) using traditional knowledge and local resources is enabling pathways for sustainable agricultural development. We find that the evolution of Indigenous entrepreneurship in the Darjeeling region is deeply embedded in the historical events, socio-cultural ethos, ecological setting and local geopolitical developments, which are shaping the agricultural landscape of the region. The Indigenous tea entrepreneurs of Darjeeling, through their resolution to create new ventures to benefit their community, have brought about several economic, social and ecological changes, which have significant implications for the conservation of nature, climate action and sustainability.

Morphological and molecular characterization of fungi associated with tea (Camellia sinensis L. Kuntze) blister blight disease isolated from Darjeeling tea estates, India

Abstract The mechanisms through which voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) become effective as means of private governance and how they influence power relations in global production networks (GPNs) of certified goods are not well understood. Focussing on the last mile of VSS’ travel, we scrutinize the discursive dimension of power as it operates through the translation of Fairtrade in a local contact zone, namely Fairtrade trainings with workers at Indian tea plantations. Drawing on insights from postcolonial translation studies and actor-network-theory we show that the ways in which VSS are translated by cultural brokers are critical to processes of (dis)empowerment of workers. By showing how translation informs discursive power, our research offers a novel framework to unpack the power structures associated with private regulation as set within the context of multi-polar governance structures and the postcolonial legacies of places.

The rise of microfinance is lauded for its potential to uplift underserved communities, promising to stabilise household incomes, empower women, and broaden access to vital services. While numerous studies support its outreach to marginalised populations, concerns have emerged regarding its impact. Though intended to aid those in poverty, microfinance sometimes exposes borrowers to the risk of falling into debt traps. Our study aims to assess whether microfinance improves the Quality of Life (QoL) of borrowers and if this improvement is sustainable. Focusing on tea garden workers in Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, we analyse data from 150 participants. While initially enhancing living standards, microfinance’s effect on long-term poverty alleviation is complex, akin to a double-edged sword: it aids in escaping poverty but can also escalate debt burdens. While microfinance provides crucial credit access to the poor, the ease of access to borrowing, particularly for non-productive purposes, raises concerns about entrapment in debt cycles. Balancing its benefits and risks is vital to ensuring sustained effectiveness in poverty reduction.

Two sides of the same coin: the Darjeeling tea saga and the need to reform the legal protection of geographical indications

ABSTRACT Biodynamic agriculture is akin to organic farming, but with some twists. It involves complex, multi-step, and seasonally appropriate techniques, which together work to ‘regenerate’ the agrarian environment. While biodynamic agriculture is predominately practiced in the Global North and associated with the teachings of the German Anthroposophical thinker Rudolf Steiner, Demeter (biodynamic) certification came to Indian tea plantations in the 1990s along with other third-party certification programs (e.g. fair trade). Biodynamic narratives of ‘regeneration’ on tea plantations in Darjeeling as I argue in this article, are green washing, at best. Biodynamic production and its attendant performances are a means of regenerating a fundamentally extractive industry for consumers desirous of redemptive stories about the ecologies that bring their comestibles into being. Biodynamic practice and marketing on plantations highlights, in the framing of this special issue, a kind of ‘plant intimacy’. But this ‘plant intimacy’ is a fetishized and romanticized representation of plantation work that occludes history, forms of violence and difference and political economy.

Meteorological and edaphic factors significantly affect the first flush metabolite composition of Darjeeling tea, impacting flavor, nutrition, and customer preferences. The Camellia sinensis var. sinensis grown in the Darjeeling hills was sampled at different stages of processing. 75 metabolites were identified using a GC/MS-based metabolomic and chemometric technique. The study aimed to pinpoint quality markers and create a database for Darjeeling tea authenticity, India’s first geographical indication product. Principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis revealed changes in tea metabolites during processing, while the chemometric study demonstrated variations in key compounds. Antioxidant activity exhibited significant variations among the samples with final processed showing highest antioxidant potential. The concentration of amino acids increased significantly (p < 0.05) from fresh tea leaves to the final processed product. Conversely, the content of organic acids, inorganic acids, and fatty acids was observed to decrease. Additionally, caffeic acids, epicatechin, epigallocatechin, chlorogenic acid, 3, 4-dihydroxybenzoic acid, and 4-hydroxycinnamic acid increased in concentration, while catechin, (-)-epicatechin, gallic acid, pyrogallol, quinic acid, shikimic acid, and arbutin decreased significantly in concentration in the final processed tea. Meteorological parameters were documented during the study period, showing variation in the levels of PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2, and SO2. The findings of this study offer insightful information on the variables influencing Darjeeling tea metabolite composition, which tea producers and processors can use to raise the standard and authenticity of this beverage.Graphical abstract

Darjeeling tea is a globally renowned beverage, which faces numerous obstacles in sexual reproduction, such as self-incompatibility, poor seed germination, and viability, as well as issues with vegetative propagation. Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is a valuable method for rapid clonal propagation of Darjeeling tea. However, the metabolic regulatory mechanisms underlying SE in Darjeeling tea remain largely unknown. To address this, we conducted an integrated metabolomics and transcriptomics analysis of embryogenic callus (EC), globular embryo (GE), and heart-shaped embryo (HE). The integrated analyses showed that various genes and metabolites involved in the phenylpropanoid pathway, auxin biosynthesis pathway, gibberellin, brassinosteroid and amino acids biosynthesis pathways were differentially enriched in EC, GE, and HE. Our results revealed that despite highly up-regulated auxin biosynthesis genes YUC1, TAR1 and AAO1 in EC, endogenous indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) was significantly lower in EC than GE and HE. However, bioactive Gibberellin A4 displayed higher accumulation in EC. We also found higher BABY BOOM (BBM) and Leafy cotyledon1 (LEC1) gene expression in GE along with high accumulation of castasterone, a brassinosteroid. Total flavonoids and phenolics levels were elevated in GE and HE compared to EC, especially the phenolic compound chlorogenic acid was highly accumulated in GE. Integrated metabolome and transcriptome analysis revealed enriched metabolic pathways, including auxin biosynthesis and signal transduction, brassinosteroid, gibberellin, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, amino acids metabolism, and transcription factors (TFs) during SE in Darjeeling tea. Notably, EC displayed lower endogenous IAA levels, conducive to maintaining differentiation, while higher IAA concentration in GE and HE was crucial for preserving embryo identity. Additionally, a negative correlation between bioactive gibberellin A4 (GA4) and IAA was observed, impacting callus growth in EC. The high accumulation of chlorogenic acid, a phenolic compound, might contribute to the low success rate in GE and HE formation in Darjeeling tea. TFs such as BBM1, LEC1, FUS3, LEA, WOX3, and WOX11 appeared to regulate gene expression, influencing SE in Darjeeling tea.

Traditional healing and antimicrobial role of the herbal drug against UTIs by ethnic people of Darjeeling tea gardens, India

Two sides of the same coin: the Darjeeling tea saga and the need to reform the legal protection of geographical indications

This article argues that burgeoning economic uncertainty, competitiveness of commodity production after COVID-19 and labour reforms may facilitate the industry to reorganise work arrangements through labour flexibilisation and mechanisation, accentuate health precarity, and nefariously push the disenfranchised Darjeeling tea labour further into oblivion. Workers’ access to basic healthcare services for illnesses and diseases such as fevers, diarrhoea, dysentery, anaemia, and hypertension pivots on the fragile lines of power and ethno-gender that are deeply embedded in plantation societies. Subsequently, social distancing as a preventive everyday measure during the pandemic appears to have reinforced both class and caste divide among these communities. The tangible absence of a robust health infrastructure in the Darjeeling hills exposes the undeniable shift in the responsibility of healthcare by the tea garden management on workers’ households and the samaj, as a social collective in managing illness and care.

Darjeeling tea profiling using 1H NMR and multivariate analysis

ダージリン紅茶セカンドフラッシュに特徴的な香気成分であるホトリエノールを就寝時に吸入し，睡眠に及ぼす効果を検討した．ホトリエノール揮散条件と対照の水揮散条件で，睡眠およびストレスに関する心理質問紙，活動量から求めた睡眠変数を比較した．その結果，ホトリエノール条件で，PSQI総合得点およびストレススコアの低下量，OSA因子得点のうち起床時眠気，入眠と睡眠維持，夢み，疲労回復の増加量は有意に大きかった．また，活動量計による睡眠変数の解析では，入眠潜時，総睡眠時間および睡眠効率が有意な変化を示した．以上の結果から，就寝時にホトリエノールを吸入することにより，睡眠状態が改善するとともに，主観的にも睡眠の質や睡眠感が良好になるという睡眠改善効果が認められた．

Abstract Furan fatty acids (FuFAs) are valuable antioxidants with highly effective radical scavenging properties which are widely distributed at low levels in food. Previous research indicated that tea is a valuable source of FuFAs. However, tea is only consumed in form of infusions. To fill this gap, we prepared infusions from different herbal, green, and black teas. Initial measurements with GC‐MSMS of tea verified previous findings that 11‐(3,4‐dimethyl‐5‐penylfuran‐2‐yl)‐undecanoic acid (11D5) was the prevalent FuFA in tea matrix. Therefore, 11D5 was quantified in tea infusions by means of UHPLC‐MSMS equipment after mild alkaline hydrolysis. While herbal tea infusions were low or free of FuFAs, 11D5 was detectable in all samples of green and black tea infusions. Amounts of 11D5 were higher in green tea than in black tea. Moreover, Darjeeling tea infusions were by ~30% richer in 11D5 than black and green teas from other regions. Each cup of green and black tea infusion may provide 20–60 μg 11D5, which is about 5% of the amounts found in tea samples. Spread over the day, regular tea consumption may contribute to the intake of valuable FuFAs.

Analysis of second flush Darjeeling tea aroma components and their effects on autonomic nervous system activity

India contributes 28% of the world's tea production, and the Darjeeling tea of India is a world-famous tea variety known for its unique quality, flavour and aroma. This study analyzed the spatial distribution of bacterial communities in the tea rhizosphere of six different tea estates at different altitudes. The organic carbon, total nitrogen and available phosphate were higher in the rhizosphere soils than the bulk soils, irrespective of the sites. Alpha and beta diversities were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the bulk soil than in the rhizosphere. Among the identified phyla, the predominant ones were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria. At the genus level, only four out of 23 predominant genera (>1% relative abundance) could be classified, viz., Candidatus Solibacter (5.36 ± 0.36%), Rhodoplanes (4.87 ± 0.3%), Candidatus Koribacter (2.3 ± 0.67%), Prevotella (1.49 ± 0.26%). The rhizosphere effect was prominent from the significant depletion of more ASVs (n = 39) compared to enrichment (n = 11). The functional genes also exhibit a similar trend with the enrichment of N2 fixation genes, disease suppression and Acetoin synthesis. Our study reports that the rhizobiome of tea is highly selective by reducing the alpha and beta diversity while enriching the significant functional genes.

Effects of second flush Darjeeling tea aroma on psychological and nervous system activities

The red spider mite, Oligonychus coffeae (Nietner) serves as a serious threat to the Darjeeling tea plantations affecting the quality of the leaves. Various plant extracts are currently being researched as an alternative to the chemical pesticides to control the red spider mites. In the present study, the leaves of Vitex negundo L. and the bulb of Allium sativum L. were analyzed for their acaricidal activity on the larval, nymphal and adult stages of the mite. Both the extracts were found to have potent activity against red spider mites and may prove to be potential acaricides in future.

Genome-wide SNP discovery from Darjeeling tea cultivars - their functional impacts and application toward population structure and trait associations