Published Paper Details:

Tea garden along with its factory is known as tea industry. Thousands of acres of unfertile land of Dooars of North Bengal came under the ambit of the tea plantation from long past. To satisfy the growing demand of green tea leaf, the concept of Bought leaf tea factory is introduced in India. Consequently, the plain fertile area of Mekhliganj, Cooch Behar covered very rapidly by the mushroom like growth of small tea garden. This study showed that by nature, 85% the soil of this very area is, deep to very deep fine loamy & coarse loamy and suitable for crop plant like Paddy, Wheat, Jute, Tobacco and other winter vegetables etc. Tea plant needs huge amount of water, in every year a large amount of water come out of the soil. Water table of soil gradually declined. An average crop of 2000 kg made-tea/hector will remove around 100 kg nitrogen, 20 kg phosphate and 40 kg potash per hector per year from soil in addition to nutrients locked up in the bush frame. So, the growers of small holdings used to provide large amount of fertilizer mainly of chemical nature such as urea and potash to the soil to satisfy the fertilizer requirement of the tea plants. Nature of soil degrades in course of time. Unscientific use of herbicides like Glyphosate, Paraquat became the cause of complete eradication of ferns and other angiospermic herb. This paper, focus that the profit- making attitude of cultivating tea plant in plain area ultimately leads to spoil the soil nature, lowered the ground water table and loss of biodiversity of this very region.