Mr. Pham S, Vice Chairman of the Lam Dong Provincial People's Committee, has conducted studies on a high-yielding tea variety with outstanding productivity not only locally but also widely developed throughout the country.
In 1993, while working as Deputy Director in charge of engineering at Minh Rong Tea Farm in Lam Dong Province’s Bao Lam District, Dr. Pham S noticed that Lam Dong tea varieties at that time were less diverse, low yield with only about 5 tons per ha. Since then, he has always been interested in selecting seeds for good productivity.
At that time, he worked as a manager, but he spent a lot of time in the fields researching naturally mutated tea individuals. Furthermore, the farm's tea is one of the oldest tea areas grown from seeds in Lam Dong Province since 1942 with an area of about 450 hectares, so he found it convenient for doing his research.
He remembered that it took five years from the time he identified a good individual and started to conduct a sexual propagation and planted trials to determine the variety. He did research by using his personal funds and spent his days off researching this tea variety.
After many years of carrying out studies, he decided to select the LD97 tea variety which Lam Dong announced in 1997 because the variety has many outstanding advantages in quality and yield of 20 tons a ha, 4 times higher than the average yield. This became a breakthrough for Vietnam's tea industry.
Through spending a lot of time doing research, he determined that the LD97 variety was an individually selected research tea variety with a yield of 20-22 tons per ha and good quality. This is the tea variety with the most hairs and young leaves among all current tea varieties in Vietnam and around the world. Therefore, the price of LD97 raw tea is always 20 percent-25 percent higher than other high-yield tea varieties, said Dr. Pham S.
The LD97 tea variety is completely selected from genetic resources in Lam Dong province. After being recognized for copyright and mass production, the LD97 tea variety has not only grown in thousands of hectares in Lam Dong province but also in the provinces of Gia Lai, Quang Nam, Nghe An, Tuyen Quang, Phu Tho. At the same time, the LD97 variety is a tea variety that many businesses in Lam Dong invest in production and business because it brings higher economic efficiency than some other tea varieties and also favored by many consumers.
After the variety was introduced, it won the Gold Medal in the Vietnam Tea Product Quality Contest in 2003 and the LD97 flavored tea product of Lan Huong Bao Loc tea enterprise won the gold medal at the Vietnam Tea Exhibition 2008.
In recent years, Lam Dong province has always invested in converting tea varieties with the annual rate of new tea varieties up to 100 percent of the converted tea area in the entire province.
Lam Dong Province is one of the few localities with the highest tea productivity and output in the country, accounting for 25 percent of the area and 27 percent of the output. By 2022, the whole province will have a tea area of over 11,000 hectares, an average yield of nearly 15 tons per ha, and an output of 164,143 tons.
Tea processing establishments in Lam Dong Province are located in all districts in the province with nearly 120 tea processing enterprises with a capacity of about 27,000 tons annually. Some 90 tea processing establishments mostly in Da Lat City, Bao Loc, Bao Lam and Lam Ha districts can manufacture around 17,000 tons a year.
Among these, 18 enterprises were certified with HACCP, ISO, and Halal for synchronous application of quality management processes in tea processing. These enterprises have linked with 338 households for producing 818 hectares of tea with a yearly output of 9,000 tons.
At the China-based International Tea Expo (Tea Expo), a major event of the world tea industry that recently took place, Dr. Pham S was nominated and awarded the certificate as a scientist with outstanding contributions to the world tea industry for his dedication to the Vietnamese and world tea industry.
Dr. Pham S said that in the coming time, the locality will continue to focus on developing tea varieties, promoting organic tea production, circular farming, and improving product quality and design. Moreover, authorities in Lam Dong Province simultaneously continue to promote local tea products through trade promotion, investment, and international cooperation.
