Boosting income: Palampur institute to extract catechin from tea

Lalit Mohan

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Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, March 3

The Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology (IHBT), Palampur, a CSIR centre, has developed a technology to extract catechin from Kangra tea. The technology can help boost income of the tea farmers of Kangra district.

Director of the institute Sanjay Kumar while talking to The Tribune said the IHBT had entered into an agreement with Baijnath Pharmaceuticals for commercial use of catechin to be extracted from Kangra tea.

“Catechin is a type of natural phenol and antioxidant. Being an antioxidant, it is in great demand for its anti-aging properties,” he said.

With technology being outsourced by the IHBT to Baijnath Pharmaceuticals, the company would be able to produce catechin capsules from the product extracted from Kangra tea. Catechin capsules would be launched in local markets in the next few months, he said.

Sanjay said presently Kangra tea farmers were getting adequate price for their produce. They are getting a price of just Rs 18 per kg for the tea leaf produce. As per the data collected by the IHBT, a tea farmer in Kangra is earning just Rs 4 per tea plant. The income is not enough to make tea farming viable for farmers. However, once the catechin production unit starts at Baijnath, the farmers would be able to earn about Rs 24 per tea plant. This would be four-time boost to their income, the IHBT director said.

He said for catechin production, fine grade tea leaves were not required. “We can use low grade tea leaves that are not used for tea production. This can provide the farmers with an option of selling their high-grade tea leaves to tea producers and low grade that hardly have any market value to us for catechin production. The tea leaves from even unmaintained plants can be used for catechin production,” he said.

The Baijnath Pharmaceuticals would be installing a 100-kg catechin extraction plant to start with. However, the production can be increased to 3,000 kg soon. The Department of Bio-technology (DBT), Government of India, had funded the IHBT project to develop technology to produce catechin from tea, the director said.