New Machines in Georgia for the Future Development of the Tea Industry

Abstract

At the end of last Century, as a result of Noneffective agricultural politic, Tea-growing field was almost liquidated.

In the last years, with the effort of Georgian Government, the tea-growing field is gradually being revived and developed. Currently, in the regions of western Georgia, the interest of farmers and the population for the production of tea products is gradually increasing, but the efforts of one or two entrepreneurs are not enough for the full-scale revival and development of tea-growing field. Today for the tea-growing field development is necessary bigger and more rational projects. Except rehabilitation of the degraded plantations, it is also necessary to cultivate new fruitful plantations, to develop modern technologies and process technical means of tea maintenance-growing in production. Special attention should be given to mechanization of time-consuming processes of tea maintenance-growing. In this direction, scientific, design and technological works are being carried out in the Agro-Engineering Research Service of the LEPL Agricultural Research Center. In 2018-2020, a tea combining aggregate was developed and tested in the field, which performs four operations simultaneously in one pass in plantation: surface based trimming, trimmed mass fragmentation, mineral fertilizer application, soil cultivation between rows, trimmed mass and mineral fertilizer appliance in the depth (view picture 1).