History of tea war on China was one of Britain's tactics, it also began to explore, then executed, a plan to use India for growing tea. After tea plants were smuggled out of China, plantations were established in areas such as Darjeeling, Assam, and Ceylon. As an attempt to circumvent its dependence on Chinese tea, the East India Company sent Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to China to purchase and bring out of China tea plants, which were then taken to India, although it was the discovery of native varieties of tea plant in India which proved more important for the development of production
Tea production in Sri Lanka biological control (a parasitic wasp, "Macrosentus homonae") to suppress the Tea Tortrix caterpillar, which had threatened the tea crop. In 1941 the first Ceylonese tea broking house, M/s Pieris & Abeywardena, was established, and in 1944 the Ceylon Estate Employers' Federation was founded. On October 1, 1951, an export duty on tea was introduced and in 1955 the first clonal tea fields began cultivation. In 1958, the State Plantations Corporation was established, and on June 1, 1959, Ad Valorem Tax was introduced for teas sold at the Colombo auctions. By the 1960s, Sri Lanka's total tea production and exports exceeded