Itanagar: This Valentine’s Day, tea lovers will gather near the Siang River in Pasighat in East Siang district to talk about tea, discuss ideas for tea growth and blending process and have an opportunity to learn about new processes of cultivation and processing.
The Arunachal Tea Festival (ATF), organised by the Arunachal Pradesh Agriculture Marketing Board (APAMB), will be held in the picturesque venue of The Lhoba Resort on the outskirts of Pasighat, along the Siang River.
The first-of-its-kind festival will seek to provide a platform to commemorate the centuries-old tea culture prevalent in the state.
Tea cultivation has a long history with the Singphos having grown & brewed it for centuries and taught the British who spawned an industry out of it.
The traditional teas brewed inside bamboo tubes by the Singpho and Tangsa people, known as ‘phalap’, are consumed to this day.
The festival will also seek to celebrate the recent rise of indigenously-grown tea from the state.
In 2018, the Golden Needles tea, a speciality orthodox tea variety from the Donyi Polo Tea Estate in Oyan in East Siang was auctioned for Rs 40,000 a kilogram by the Assam Tea Traders.
The ATF will also bring together small tea growers, tea blenders and tasters to discuss ideas for improvement and possible future for the growth of the sector.
Arunachal Pradesh is one of the major tea-producing states in India besides other states like Assam, West Bengal, Sikkim, and Tripura. Tea cultivation is taking rapid strides in the hill slopes of Lohit, East Siang, Dibang Valley, Changlang, and Tirap districts.
State agriculture and horticulture minister Tage Taki will be present to officially inaugurate the festival.
Representatives from the Arunachal Pradesh Small Tea Growers Association, government officials, and 30 tea growers are expected to attend the day-long event.
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A technical session will be held on ‘Marketing of Tea for Tea Blenders in Arunachal/NER by M-Junction’ by tea taster Rituraj Hazarika, the branch head of the Jorhat Tea E-Marketplace that manages the Jorhat Tea Auction Centre in Assam.
Sessions will also be held on tea blending with assistant professor of the Assam Agricultural University Dr Diganta Kumar Bora, in charge of its Tea Processing Unit in the Tea Husbandry and Technology; as well as a tea tasting session of various teas grown in Arunachal Pradesh by Dr Roman Gogoi, a veteran tea taster with the Tea Research Association of the Jorhat-based Tocklai Tea Research Institute.
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