Assessment of land suitability for tea cultivation using geo-informatics in the Mansehra and Abbottabad District

Abstract

Pakistan is a major tea consumer country and ranked as one of the largest importer of tea worldwide. This research has been conducted over district Mansehra and district Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan where the most favourable conditions for tea cultivation already exist and National Tea Research Institute has done successful experiments to cultivate high quality tea. High tech approach is adopted to meet the objectives of this research by using the remotely sensed data i.e. Aster DEM, Land sat8 Imagery. Results showed that in study area 13.24% (778.3 sq.km.) is highly suitable, 33.44% (1966 sq.km.) is suitable, 30.71% area (1805 sq.km.) is moderately suitable, 16.13% area (948.5 sq.km.) is less suitable, and 6.46% (379.3 sq.km.) is not suitable for tea cultivation. This geomatics based model and approach could be used to identify more areas for tea cultivation to meet country's demand.