In Kafka 0.8beta a topic can be created using a command like below as mentioned here
bin/kafka-create-topic.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --replica 2 --parti
`
import kafka.admin.AdminUtils;
import kafka.cluster.Broker;
import kafka.utils.ZKStringSerializer$;
import kafka.utils.ZkUtils;
String zkConnect = "localhost:2181";
ZkClient zkClient = new ZkClient(zkConnect, 10 * 1000, 8 * 1000, ZKStringSerializer$.MODULE$);
ZkUtils zkUtils = new ZkUtils(zkClient, new ZkConnection(zkConnect), false);
Properties pop = new Properties();
AdminUtils.createTopic(zkUtils, topic.getTopicName(), topic.getPartitionCount(), topic.getReplicationFactor(),
pop);
zkClient.close();`