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| Sunday, 1 May 2005 |
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Tea plucking basket wins gold by P. Rajaratnam in Nuwara Eliya Asia's premier research units, the Tea Research Institute at Talawakelle has won yet another gold Medal at the exhibition held in Geneva for inventing a modern tea plucking basket. Earlier the TRI received the President's Award at a ceremony organised by the Investors Commission. The two awards were personally received by Dr. W. A. Wijeratne, a senior research officer of the TRI. In the past, cane baskets were used by the tea pluckers. However at present, fertiliser bags or poly-sacks are being used and which causes a lot of damage to the plucked leaves. This affects the quality of the made tea. The Director of the Tea Research Institute, Dr. M. T. Ziyad Mohammed told our correspondent that in order to safeguard the top position of Sri Lankan made tea and to enhance the efficiency of tea pluckers, a work program was implemented to design and develop a new plucking basket some time back. He said the new plucking basket invented by Dr. Wijeratne is of lightweight than the cane basket. This new basket has been lined 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 that this basket to be quite popular with the tea pluckers. The Director further stated that the design of the basket has been passed onto a private company to manufacture and market them to the estates at reasonable prices. There are several requests from local tea producers as well as from other tea producing countries like Kenya. Dr. M. A. Wijeratne is a senior research officer as well as the officer-in-charge, TRI Low Country Station, Ratnapura. In the past his intervention of the TRI's selective tea harvester has received the President's Award and had won a Gold Medal at the International Exhibition held in Geneva, Switzerland. |
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