1. Selection of Mother Tea Bush:
Mother Tea Bushes are preliminary selected from an existing tea plantation on the basis of some selection-criteria of morpho-physiological characteristics of the plant, viz. bush-frame, vigour and growth, leaf-pubescence, the density of plucking-points on plucking table, etc. The final selection is made by several laboratory tests and field trials, viz. rooting trial, yield trial and quality tasting, etc.
2. Nucleus Clone Plot (NCP)
The selection of mother tea bushes from the existing tea plantation is time consuming and laborious. For continuous supply of tea cuttings of highly productive quality clones, a separate area is planted with recognized clones that is known as Nucleus Clone Plot. The NCP is built for each type of clones to be propagated in three ways, viz. (i) by using the existing clonal plantation, if any, in an estate, (ii) by converting a proportion of mature seedling tea plantation through grafting of desired clone, or (iii) by planting a separate area with desired clones.
Generally the NCP is design to plant 400 plants in a block, 100 plants in each of 4 sub-blocks.
3. Maintenance of NCP
At first year, the area should receive NPK 2:1:1 at the highest rate, proper mulching and irrigation during the dry period. A high standard of inspection and crop protection measures are taken. The sequence of taking cuttings and annual prunings are carefully adjusted. Long stem prunings about 6mm. thick at the base are collected from the nucleus bushes during spring cuttings (May-June) and autumn cuttings (September-October). The primaries regrown from the pruned stubs are superior to the secondaries grown from auxiliary buds on the primaries.
