How Can Tea Quality Be Further Improved? Starting from the Source Is Key

The National Ecological Tea Garden Construction Seminar, themed "Exploring Ecological Planting to Ensure Source Safety," was held in Beijing recently. Industry insiders at the meeting held in-depth discussions on how to strengthen tea garden construction and further improve tea quality and safety.

Building Ecological Tea Gardens Starting from Small Steps

Wang Qing, Executive Vice President of the China Tea Marketing Association, said at the meeting that over the years, through the joint efforts of the government and the entire industry, China's tea industry has achieved substantial improvements in quality awareness, industry standards and product inspection levels. On the whole, China's tea is safe, but to further improve the quality of Chinese tea, we must be down-to-earth and start from small steps.

Chen Zemin, a deputy to the National People's Congress and President of the China Agricultural Industry Chamber of Commerce, once participated in the revision of the Food Safety Law. He said: "The newly revised Food Safety Law highlights the implementation of food safety through legal system construction. This is the strictest law on food safety in our country's history. Under such circumstances, we must pay even more attention to the safety of crops, especially the tea industry, because the tea industry has relatively high added value, and the reputation and value of the tea industry must not be damaged by tea contamination. A market economy is a credibility economy."

Li Li, Director of the Economic Crops Division of the National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, told reporters that tea garden construction is one of the current focuses of work. As the country's requirements for tea quality and safety have increased in recent years, we need even more to strengthen the promotion of safe planting methods in tea gardens.

Wang Shuguang, General Manager of Jiangxi Guishi Weiye Tea Co., Ltd., believes that organic tea garden construction should be carried out rationally. At present, ecological tea garden construction still faces difficulties. For example, the organic tea area in Wuyuan is gradually shrinking, and tea output and export prices cannot be raised, which brings great pressure to tea enterprises. He hopes that industry insiders can help expand the market for organic tea, which would both encourage ecological tea garden construction and ensure the benefits of tea farmers. "When tea production exceeds sales and a price war is being fought, we should even more rationally win by quality rather than blindly pursuing output."

Winning by Quality Brings Good News to Tea Farmers

Han Wenyan, a researcher at the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, proposed that foliar fertilizer should be effectively used to improve tea quality. "This is mainly because the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in tea gardens causes waste and soil pollution. Through comparative experiments, we saw that the amino acid content of tea leaves increased at 4 experimental sites and the tea polyphenol content increased at 3 experimental sites. Foliar fertilizer had a slightly weaker effect on spring tea and a more obvious effect on summer and autumn tea. At the same time, how to spray foliar fertilizer correctly is a key point, and tea farmers must be guided to apply it appropriately," Han Wenyan explained.

Yu Zeqin, General Manager of Fujian Wuyishan Qinpin Tea Co., Ltd., told reporters: "I began using tea-specific foliar fertilizer last year. After comparative experiments, I found that this special foliar fertilizer increased output while degrading pesticide residues and heavy metal residues."

Sun Weijiang, Director of the Tea Science Department at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, believes that the rare earth problem in Fujian oolong tea is mainly due to two reasons: on the one hand, the rare earth content in the soil of South China is relatively high; on the other hand, because oolong tea leaves have a high degree of maturity, and tea plants easily absorb trace elements from the soil, the rare earth content is relatively high. After using tea-specific foliar fertilizer, the rare earth content at some experimental sites decreased somewhat. If seasonal testing can verify that Penshibao foliar fertilizer has the effect of improving rare earth content, this will be good news for green tea and Pu'er tea, which use highly mature leaves.

Xu Yansong, Director of the Xiuning County Tea Industry Bureau in Anhui Province, introduced that Xiuning County has a tea garden area of 200,000 mu. As a demonstration area for the quality and safety of exported tea in the province, the county has established and improved tea quality control systems such as agricultural chemical input control and standardized tea base management, and has long used Penshibao tea-specific foliar fertilizer. In recent years, the use of this special foliar fertilizer has not only increased the density of tea buds, but also allowed fresh buds to be picked 5-6 days earlier, and the output of summer and autumn tea has also increased significantly. The tea gardens' drought resistance and cold resistance have also been enhanced. Last year, all spot-check test results of tea in Xiuning County were qualified, with no problems such as excessive heavy metals or pesticide residues.

As a well-known domestic organic water-soluble fertilizer brand with a 30-year history, Penshibao Company is very concerned about the quality of Chinese tea. Zheng Guojian, Director of the National Tea Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, released the "Test Report on the Use of Penshibao Tea-Specific Fertilizer in Tea Gardens." Wang Qing said he hopes more enterprises will, like Penshibao Company, devote themselves to developing products that improve tea quality and reduce pesticide residues and heavy metal residues.