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| Sunday, 10 April 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Tea plucking basket to be exhibited at Geneva exhibition The new tea plucking basket produced by Dr. M. A. Wijeratne, Senior Research Officer of the Tea Research Institute (TRI) of Sri Lanka has been selected by the Sri Lanka Inventors Commission to be exhibited at the International Exhibition of Inventions at Geneva. The basket won the Presidential Award, at the Presidential Awards ceremony organised by the Commission. In the past cane baskets were used by tea pluckers. However, at present fertiliser bags or poly-sacks are being used which causes much damage to the plucked leaves. This affects the quality of the made tea. Director, Tea Research Institute, Dr. M. T. Ziyad Mohamed said that in order to safeguard the top position of Sri Lankan made tea and to enhance the efficiency of the tea pluckers, a work program was implemented to design and develop a new plucking basket, sometime ago. The new plucking basket invented by Dr. Wijeratne is lighter than the cane basket. The new basket has been lined inside with nylon netting which provides good ventilation to the plucked tea leaves. This basket can be carried very easily like a back-pack. The basket frame has been made of PVC tubes enabling it to be folded. Therefore, the TRI expects this basket to become quite popular with tea pluckers. The design of the basket has been passed on to a private company to manufacture and market the same at a reasonable price. There are several requests for this basket from the local tea producers as well as from other tea producing countries, such as Kenya, he said. Dr. Wijeratne is a Senior Research Officer as well as the Officer-in-charge, TRI Low-country station, Ratnapura. His invention of the TRI Selective Tea Harvester has received the Presidential Award and had won a Gold Medal at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland. |
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