Sri Lanka’s regional plantation companies have set out the estate-level measures they are using against this year’s El Niño dry spell, in an account that also puts a number on how slowly the sector’s deepest defence can be built: about 25 years to develop a new tea cultivar.

The detail comes in an analysis published by Lanka Business Online, written by Jithendra Antonio, drawing on named companies and on Professor Buddhi Marambe, Senior Professor of Crop Science at the University of Peradeniya.

The distinction Marambe draws

“El Niño is not caused by climate change. It is a natural climate variability that has occurred for hundreds of years,” Marambe says. “But that doesn’t mean resilience building in our agricultural systems isn’t helping. It directly assists in mitigating the impacts of extreme events like El Niño.”

His point about timescale is the sharper one. The Tea Research Institute released Sri Lanka’s first drought-tolerant tea cultivar only in 2016, after years of work, and “it normally takes about 25 years to develop a new tea cultivar” — which is why the Planters’ Association presses for sustained research funding rather than short cycles.

Dry weather does not hit every elevation alike. Low-grown tea and rubber around Ratnapura and Galle feel it fastest, because prolonged heat and soil-moisture loss can cut yields within weeks. High-grown gardens in Nuwara Eliya and Badulla are more sheltered from dry spells but carry a slower risk from rising night temperatures.

What the estates are actually doing

Udapussellawa Plantations PLC made mother-leaf plucking mandatory to protect bushes from moisture stress, intensified foliar bio-fertiliser application, diverted water to the worst-affected fields, strengthened shade cover, applied potassium to help regulate water loss through the stomata, and cut drains ahead of the dry spell to hold moisture in the root zone. Rooftop solar eases demand on hydropower so conserved water can flow downstream.

Browns Plantations’ Maturata estates run bowsers and sprinklers to new clearings and nurseries, use thatching in young tea to conserve soil moisture, and have suspended shade lopping and pruning for the dry period. Vulnerable housing and landslide-prone sites are monitored against National Building Research Institute guidance, with relocation planned through the authorities.

Kelani Valley Plantations PLC has the longest horizon. Its Agroforestry Pilot at Halgolla Estate layers vegetation for soil conservation, water retention and additional income, and is being replicated elsewhere. Its Surakimu Ganga programme has planted more than 10,000 native trees in the Kelani basin at a survival rate above 99%. KVPL became the first plantation company in the world — and Halgolla the first tea estate — to gain regenagri certification, backed by research ties to Peradeniya, Wageningen University and IUCN Sri Lanka.

Horana Plantations PLC, part of the Hayleys plantation sector, leans on technology: weather stations installed with the Arthur C. Clarke Institute feed early alerts on temperature, rainfall and soil moisture, drone mapping flags nutrient and pest problems, and smart fertigation cuts water waste in coffee. Solar and mini-hydro generated 1,243 MWh last year, and its TeaShade Carbon Project is Sri Lanka’s first plantation scheme registered under the Verified Carbon Standard.

Lalith Obeyesekere, Secretary General of the Planters’ Association of Ceylon, said the response to El Niño shows climate resilience is already core business strategy, and makes the case for more government and institutional support to scale it. Marambe’s framing is blunter: “People respond when they understand the real economic risk. Every plantation crop is an export earner.”

The drought figure in the article is out of date

The analysis opens by attributing to the National Disaster Relief Services Centre a toll of “over 81,000 people across 25,563 families in seven districts” — Ampara, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa, Badulla, Monaragala, Hambantota and Ratnapura.

That is not the current picture. It is, to within a few dozen families, the snapshot recorded on 21 August, when the Disaster Management Centre put the toll at 81,765 people from 25,628 families across exactly that set of seven districts. The figure has since roughly doubled: by 20 September the DMC reported 169,071 people from 51,959 families across ten districts, Anuradhapura, Matale and Vavuniya having been added, with Monaragala still worst affected.

The scale-setting statistic in the analysis is therefore about six weeks old and less than half the most recent official count. The government relief measures it cites — daily allocations raised from six to 15 litres per person, 324 water bowsers deployed and Rs. 4.8 billion set aside — are not figures we have been able to match against a dated official release, and are reported here as the article’s own.

None of this bears on the plantation-sector detail above, which is fresh and is not carried by any other verified newsroom at the time of writing.