COONOOR: The Nilgiris, known to be tourists favourite location, has a new tourist spot. A ‘crafted tea’ plantation, which belongs to the Benkal Tea Estate, located six kilometres from Coonoor has been attracting tourists. Captivated by the beauty of the plantation, they stop their vehicles to click pictures of the plantation, What makes Benkal plantation different from the other estates is that the ‘crafted tea’ fields are across the slope-terrain.
Explaining the plantation, Benkal’s leaseholder M Munuswamy told TNIE, that the 25-acre out of the 100-acre plantation suffered frostbite in January and has regained its beauty after a harsh winter and unseasonal rains. “Usually, it takes more than three months for the tea bushes to become green after they have turned brown and charred. We expected a revival only by April. However, thanks to the welcome unusual rains that came soon,” he added.
Hailed for being one among the pioneers to introduce machine harvesting in the tea fields in the district, Munuswamy said, “In the last decade, we have converted an almost discarded segment of the estate into a crafted belt using machine harvesting.”
We executed our mental design on the tea field using machine harvesting and engaged machines for other field operations as well as included lane creation, pruning, and skipping, he detailed.
Munuswamy said that he expects an increase of 10 per cent in the harvest this summer, because of the unusual rains. “We are also waiting to see a good improvement in the quality of the leaves which eventually would mean higher production of quality manufactured tea”, he asserted.