| Here is where PURieTEA, a brand of organic tea, claims to score since it has been certified by laboratories in India and Europe as having pesticide residues either far below detection levels or far lower that permissible levels in the West. What's more, PURieTEA is not expensive at Rs 196 a kilogram. |
| PURieTEA is being marketed by Safeway, a subsidiary of K. Maniben & Co that has been set up a few months ago to market organic food and beverage items. |
| The technology, named Rational Farming Technology (RFT), behind the product has been developed by Inhana Biosciences. |
| The USP of this technology, said P. Das Biswas, founder director of Inhana, is that there is no loss in production as a result of the conversion to organic farming from the the first. |
| Thus it was possible to keep the prices of the tea cultivated RTF low. |
| Inhana has been working on RFT at the Jalinga and Belsai tea estates of K. Maniben & Co since 2001. |
| The average production of 1,500 kg per hectare is far higher than the average 800-900 kg yield in other organic tea gardens, and does not compare too unfavourably with the 1,000-3,000 kg/hectare produce in gardens that use agricultural chemicals. |
| The production last year at the two gardens was 2 million kgs "" the remaining 3.5 million kgs of organic tea produced in the country is spread out over 42 other gardens. |
| PURieTEA will be available at malls and a few stores in Kolkata and West Bengal for now, but Safeway is in the process of putting in place an all-India supply chain, said S Mazumdar, marketing advisor. |
| After tea, Inhana is now working with potato and pineapple growers in north Bengal. |
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