Abstract:
Improved tea cultivars is one of the key determinants in facing emerging challenges of the tea industry such as high cost of production, declining land productivity, yield fluctuation due to adverse climatic effects and maintaining quality and quantity of the end product. In line with the breeding priorities Tea Research Institute (TRI) has developed its next series of cultivars which is going to be available for commercial planting in the near future. Agronomic trait evaluation of nine elite cultivars selected for up country tea growing region has completed and it is intended to characterize them for morphological descriptors before releasing them. Hence, this study was conducted with the objective of characterizing newly improved tea cultivars using internationally accepted standards and to distinguish the discriminating morphological attributes which are useful in identification of cultivars. This study was also aimed to formulate a vivid description of newly improved cultivars by preparing a cultivar catalogue
