Some Factors Affecting Tea Production in Pakistan

The nature of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, is such that certain natural factors heavily influence where it can be grown and how productive it will be. Among these factors, rainfall. temperature, and soil quality (particularly, drainag~) seem to be the most important and have limited tea production essentially to South and Southeast Asia (although an increasing amount, 5 to 6 per cent of world production in recent years, is being grown in certain areas of Africa and Latin America) [4, p. 77; 3, p. 50]. The climate of East Pakistan is suitable for tea, and the MIs of the Sylhet district in the northeast and the Chittagong district in the southeast have provided the required soil and drainage conditions to make Pakistan the seventh largest tea-producing country in the world. About 3 per cent of th, world's output is grown in East Pakistan, and of this, over 90 per cent is grown in the Sylhet distlict alone.