Developing a resilient and regenerative tea production system

茶可以被视为英国的国饮-我们每年消耗约360亿杯，茶加工业和供应链在英国雇用了3000多人。从英国出口茶叶产品也是一项重要业务。Ekaterra是世界上最大的茶叶供应商，在肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚和卢旺达都有茶叶种植园，并有茶叶生产和育种业务。然而，由于长期和更频繁的干旱，这些种植园受到气候变化的压力。茶叶生产还依赖于具有大量碳足迹的合成氮肥，导致温室气体排放。Ekaterra已经形成了一个战略愿景，使其茶园“气候积极”，使他们将有助于碳固存和增加生物多样性，即他们将有助于“再生农业”。这一愿景的主要挑战是减少合成氮的使用，并在干旱时期保持作物的生产力和适应力。在这个繁荣伙伴关系项目中，Ekaterra和克兰菲尔德将共同努力应对这些挑战。我们将开发方法来收集和分析来自茶园和育种地点的冠层图像数据，使用无人机和相机能够估计叶片温度和化学成分。这些数据将通过Ekaterra和克兰菲尔德联合开发的茶叶作物管理数字平台-“茶叶互联网TM”或“IoTeaTM”收集并与其他数据融合。我们将利用这些数据来开发更准确的预测模型，帮助农民在何时施用氮肥、施用多少氮肥、以何种形式施用氮肥、何时收获氮肥以及管理决策对环境的影响等方面做出更好的作物管理决策。我们将开发和测试氮的替代有机来源，并确保我们的模型与这些更缓慢的动员产品。同样的无人机图像技术和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回收氮或在干旱期间进入土壤剖面深处的水方面更有效。当我们发现克隆人有不同的行为时，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单个基因的哪些部分影响这些过程- Ekaterra可以利用这些信息在未来更快速地选择新的和更可持续的茶叶克隆。总体而言，繁荣伙伴关系的目标是通过开发解决方案，减少与氮肥相关的温室气体排放，同时提高茶叶土壤作物系统对干旱的适应能力，从而在再生茶叶生产方面取得重大进展。研究结果将用于支持Ekaterra自己的茶叶业务，例如通过更具弹性和可持续性的生产，新品种和技术可以授权给其他茶叶生产商。该项目开发的新数字农业方法可以授权给其他部门，包括其他种植园作物。在合作期间，将进行相互的知识转让和正式培训，以提高Ekaterra团队在项目中使用的一系列技术方面的技能。

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.