New project - Tulsi

I A WORKING WOMAN HAVING LAND MEASURING 2 KANALS IN PUNJAB.I WISH TO START A SMALL PROJECT OF MY OWN.
.IV THOUGHT OF DOING TULSI FARMING .WANT TO KNOW PROFITABLE IT CAN B.AND WHAT ALL I HAVE TO PLAN.

You must plan for what to do with the Tulsi leaves. Easy way would be to treat yours as a Tulsi nursery and supply Tulsi plants to others. Last month I bought a Tulsi plant in polybag for Rs 20 at Mumbai.

Second would be to supply the Tulsi leaves to temples for their pooja requirements.

Third would be to associate with an organization like Organic India who produce and sell worldwide Tulsi tea. However, it is not clear how you could be an associate with them. Will they buy Tulsi leaves from you? I doubt it.

Lastly, you could make Tulsi tea yourself and sell. I found that Green tea is made by steaming the tea leaves, drying the leaves for around 20 hours in flowing air and then rolling it. An oxidation step for normal tea is by-passed.

We can request someone, maybe Organic India, to state the process of making Tulsi tea leaves. Maybe steaming Tulsi would make it lose all its good chemicals. I feel that drying without raising the temperature would be required. Even air flow might take away the fine chemicals from Tulsi. I feel that Freeze drying is the way to go with Tulsi leaves. While professional Freeze drying requires specialized equipment, we can try out home freeze drying by keeping few Tulasi leaves in an open net in fridge. I suspect that the leaves may turn black and not the green colour as Organic India’s Tulsi tea. Let us try.

k vinod kumar

ps: I purchase Tulsi tea from Organic India (or its dealers) for around Rs 200 per tin of 100 gms. Would like to make this tea myself from the Tulsi plants we have.

Tulsi consists of various genera of tulsi varieties like Ram tulsi,shyam tulsi,van tulsi,chandan tulsi,bubui tulsi,saumya tulsi variety of CIMAP etc.In case you want to sell tulsi,please find out which variety sells more.There are various tulsi leaves buyers who use it for green tea etc in pouches.I have experienced many unscrupulous characterless buyers/brokers who try to fleece the farmers.There are very few honest and excellent integrity holder buyers.So in India you have to be ready to encounter crooks at every corner who will try to bring down your product’s price as low as possible.If you can hold on to these pressures you may be successful.