Developing a resilient and regenerative tea production system

茶可以被视为英国的国民饮料--我们每年消费约360亿杯，茶叶加工业和供应链在英国雇佣了3000多名员工。从英国出口茶叶产品也是一项重要的业务。Ekaterra是世界上最大的茶叶供应商，在肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚和卢旺达拥有茶叶种植园，从事茶叶生产和养殖业务。然而，由于长期和频繁的干旱，这些种植园面临着气候变化的压力。茶叶生产还依赖于合成氮肥，这种肥料有很大的碳足迹，会导致温室气体排放。埃卡特拉已经形成了一个战略愿景，使其茶园成为“积极的气候”，这样它们将有助于碳固存和增加生物多样性，即它们将为“再生农业”做出贡献。这一愿景面临的主要挑战是减少合成氮素的使用，并在干旱时期保持作物的产量和抗旱性。在这个繁荣伙伴关系项目中，Ekaterra和Cranfield将共同应对这些挑战。我们将开发方法来收集和分析来自茶园和繁育地点的树冠图像数据，使用能够估计叶片温度和化学成分的无人机和相机。这些数据将被收集起来，并通过Ekaterra和Cranfield联合开发的茶叶作物管理数字平台-“Internet of TeaTM”或“IoTeaTM”-与其他数据融合。我们将利用这些数据开发更准确的预测模型，帮助农民在何时以及以何种形式施氮量、何时收获以及管理决策对环境的影响方面做出更好的作物管理决策。我们将开发和测试替代的有机氮源，并确保我们的模型适用于这些动员速度较慢的产品。同样的无人机图像技术以及其他表征根系发育的方法也将应用于Ekaterra的育种计划，以直接选择新的茶树无性系，这些无性系在从土壤中恢复氮素或在干旱期间获取土壤深处的水方面更有效。在我们发现行为截然不同的克隆人的地方，我们将进行研究，以了解它们为什么不同。这项工作将得到扩展，使用现代基因组学技术来了解特定染色体或个别基因的哪些部分会影响这些过程-Ekaterra随后可以利用这些信息在未来更快地选择新的、更可持续的茶叶无性系。总体而言，繁荣伙伴关系的目标是通过制定减少与氮肥有关的温室气体排放的解决方案，同时提高茶树土壤-作物系统的抗旱能力，在实现可再生茶叶生产方面取得重大进展。这些成果将用于支持Ekaterra自己的茶叶业务，例如通过更具弹性和可持续的生产，新品种和新技术可以被授权给其他茶叶生产商。该项目开发的新的数字农业方法可以授权给其他部门，包括其他种植园作物。在伙伴关系期间，将有互惠的知识传授和正式培训，以提高Ekaterra团队在项目中使用的一系列技术的技能。

Tea can be regarded as the UK's national drink - we consume around 36 billion cups a year, and the tea processing industry and supply chain employs more than 3000 people in the UK. Export of tea products from the UK is also a significant business. Ekaterra, the world's largest tea provider has tea plantations in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda with tea production and breeding operations. However, these plantations are under pressure from climate change, due to prolonged and more frequent droughts. Tea production also relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers that have a large carbon footprint, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Ekaterra has formed a strategic vision to make its tea plantations "climate positive" so they will contribute to carbon sequestration and increased biodiversity, i.e. they will contribute to "regenerative agriculture". The major challenges to this vision are to reduce synthetic nitrogen use, and to keep the crop productive and resilient in times of drought. In this Prosperity Partnership project, Ekaterra and Cranfield will work together to address these challenges. We will develop methods to collect and analyse canopy image data from tea plantations and breeding sites using drones and cameras able to estimate the leaf temperature and chemical composition. The data will be collected and fused with other data though a digital platform for tea crop management - "Internet of TeaTM" or "IoTeaTM" - jointly developed by Ekaterra and Cranfield. We will use the data to develop more accurate predictive models that can help farmers to make better crop management decisions in terms of when and how much nitrogen to apply and in what form, when to harvest and the environmental impacts of management decisions. We will develop and test alternative organic sources of nitrogen and make sure that our models work with these more slowly mobilizable products. The same drone image techniques, and other methods to characterize root development, will also be applied to Ekaterra's breeding programme to directly select new tea clones that are more efficient at recovering nitrogen from the soil, or accessing water deep in the soil profile during droughts. Where we find clones with contrasting behaviour we will carry out studies to understand why they are different. This work will be extended, using modern genomics technologies to understand which parts of specific chromosomes or individual genes affect these processes - Ekaterra can then use this information to more rapidly select novel and more sustainable tea clones in the future. Overall, the aim of the Prosperity Partnership is to make major advances towards regenerative tea production by developing solutions to reduce nitrogen fertilizer-related greenhouse gas emissions while also increasing the resilience of tea soil-crop systems to drought. The results will be used to support Ekaterra's own tea business, e.g. through more resilient and sustainable production, and new varieties and technologies could be licensed to other tea producers. New digital agriculture approaches developed in the project could be licensed to other sectors, including other plantation crops. During the Partnership, there will be reciprocal knowledge transfer and formal training to upskill the Ekaterra team in a range of techniques used in the project.