2026-07-04 India's First Commercial Matcha Is Assam's, Made on a Black-Tea Estate Chota Tingrai Tea Estate in Tinsukia says it has produced India's first commercially manufactured matcha, after a decade working with Japanese partners. The first lot sold at the Guwahati auction on July 3. 2026-07-03 The New Britain Trade Deal Will Not Make Your Assam Cheaper in the UK The India-UK trade pact, set to take effect July 15, is billed as giving Indian tea duty-free access to Britain. Assam's black tea already went in duty-free. What changed is attention, not the price. 2026-07-02 Tea Workers' Union Demands Inquiry Into Kaziranga Fringe Land Handed to a Hotel Firm The Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha is calling for a high-level inquiry after land at Inle Pathar and Hatikhuli, farmed for generations by tea-tribe families on the fringe of Kaziranga National Park, was reclassified and allotted to a hospitality company. 2026-07-01 Tea Board Data Show Nearly Half of Tested Packet Tea Failed Safety Standards This Year Of 1,764 packaged tea samples the Tea Board of India tested in 2025-26, 835 failed, mostly on pesticide residue and non-permitted chemicals, an RTI response shows. The Board will not say which brands. 2026-06-30 A Fifth-Generation Assam Planter, Bidyananda Barkakoty, Takes a Heritage Award in Kolkata Bidyananda Barkakoty, a fifth-generation Assam tea planter and a familiar voice on the state of the crop, received the ASSOCHAM Legacy and Heritage Excellence Award 2026 for a family line five generations deep in the leaf. 2026-06-29 The Small Growers Who Make Half Your Assam Just Got a Farmer ID Assam has added tea and plantation land to its Farmers' Registry, letting 1.33 lakh small tea growers get a Farmer ID that links their identity to their land and opens the door to formal credit, fertiliser and crop insurance. 2026-06-28 Deckiajuli, a North-Bank Garden Worth Seeking, Tops the Guwahati Sale Deckiajuli's robust, bright CTC is a north-bank Assam garden worth seeking: the buyers who taste before they bid just rated it the season's best, setting a Rs 1,103 a kilogram record at the Guwahati auction. 2026-06-27 A 30-Year Study Finds Assam's Gardens Hotter and Drier, With the Malt in the Balance A peer-reviewed study by Tocklai and UPASI scientists reads three decades of plantation weather and finds Assam's South Bank belt up about 1.1°C, 2025 rainfall 364 mm short, and warns heat and drought are altering the leaf chemistry behind flavour and aroma. 2026-06-25 What a Day Picking Your Assam Now Pays: Rs 280 A Rs 30 rise took the Brahmaputra valley daily wage to Rs 280 from April 1, an interim figure the state says will be revised again within six months and may pass Rs 300; Adivasi worker bodies called it inadequate. 2026-06-24 Favourable Weather Gives Assam a High-Quality Second Flush Good weather has brought Assam a strong second flush this year, even after a dry start cut the early crop by nearly two-fifths and pushed auction prices up. 2026-06-23 This Year's Assam First Flush Will Be Scarcer, and Dearer A near-rainless winter thinned Assam's spring crop by roughly 39%, so the first flush reaching your cup this year is a smaller, pricier harvest. The 97% rainfall deficit behind it is why. 2026-06-22 Amchong Tea Estate Opens India's First Dedicated Tea Experience Centre Amchong Tea Estate, the only garden inside the Guwahati city limits, has opened Amchong Leaf, a guided-tour, tasting and restaurant venture its director calls an attempt to let visitors experience tea at the source. 2026-06-21 A Karbi Anglong Green Tea Grown, Made and Sold by the Women Who Pick It In Assam's Karbi Anglong hills, a women-led collective now processes and sells its own labelled green tea, Premium Karbi Artisanal Green Tea, instead of handing raw leaf to an outside factory. It is a hill-grown Assam green a drinker can seek by name and know who made it. 2026-06-16 The Ground Your Assam Grows On Is Shared With Wild Elephants A new analysis of 1,806 human-elephant conflict incidents in Assam since 2000 found tea estates acting as transit ground between shrinking forests and villages, researchers reported, with 1,468 deaths recorded over the period. 2026-05-21 The World Keeps Buying More Assam, and International Tea Day Put a Figure on It On International Tea Day, the government said India's tea exports have risen 93% by value in a decade, with the malty Assam cup a large part of the draw. 2026-05-01 From May 1, Imported Tea Must Clear a Lab Before It Can Be Sold as Indian The Tea Board of India has restored mandatory sampling of every imported tea consignment, effective May 1, aimed at the practice of blending cheap Kenyan and Nepali leaf into Indian tea and passing it off as the real thing. 2026-04-27 The Brahmaputra Is Taking the Ground a Tinsukia Estate Grows On Erosion has washed away 35.48 hectares of tea plantation at Dighaltarang Tea Estate in Tinsukia district, closing on the garden's factory, hospital and workers' quarters, with 1,474 families dependent on the estate now at risk, reports said. 2026-04-25 Union Says Thieves Are Stripping the Bushes at a Tinsukia Garden Workers at Dhelakhat Tea Estate protested for three hours outside a Tinsukia police station, saying thieves have been plucking green leaf and cutting bushes on the garden through this plucking season, and some workers were coerced into it. 2026-04-17 Assam and Bengal Growers Ask Delhi to Let Them Skip the Public Auction Four producer bodies representing about 60 percent of north India's tea have written to the Prime Minister to withdraw the rule that half of every year's crop must be sold through open auction, the room where the price is set in plain sight. 2026-03-15 The Families Who Pick Assam Tea Are Getting Title to Their Homes A first-phase rollout handed land pattas to tea garden families across Sonitpur, Golaghat, and Karbi Anglong on March 15, giving workers legal title to the housing-line land their families have lived on for generations. 2026-03-12 New Wasp Species, Named for Mahadeb, Certified Living in a Nahortoli Tea Bush Zoologists have described a new parasitic wasp, Chelonus (Carinichelonus) mahadeb, found living in the tea bushes of Assam's Nahortoli estate, a pest-control worker the garden never hired. 2026-03-09 Assam Is Paying Its Gardens to Make More of the Orthodox Tea You Seek Out The state distributed Rs 94.70 crore across 486 tea gardens on March 9 under a scheme that subsidizes orthodox and specialty tea production, the finance minister said. 2026-02-13 New EU Pesticide Limits Threaten the Strong Assam in Europe's Blends From March the European Union cuts its allowed residue of two common pesticides to a level much of Assam's export crop cannot yet meet, and growers say the strong Assam behind Europe's breakfast blends is exposed. 2026-02-06 The Termite Treatment That Clears the Leaf Within a Week, Study Finds A new Assam Agricultural University trial finds the most effective chemical against wood-eating termites in tea gardens also leaves no detectable residue in the plucked leaf within a week. 2026-01-03 North Bank Assam Tests Brighter and Stronger Than Upper Assam, Tocklai Finds The first regional quality benchmark in over a decade weighs the state's two main tea belts, and the north bank comes out ahead on the compounds behind a bright, brisk cup. 1839-01-10 The First Assam Tea a Drinker Could Buy Reaches London Eight chests of Assam tea sold at the London sales on Jan. 10, the first tea grown in India ever offered for sale, the moment the cup you pour today became something you could go out and get.