Emei Jinji Village's extra-early tea fills the air with fragrance as spring arrives early

In 2014, the new tea tree variety "Emei Wen Chun" was approved by the expert group of the Provincial Crop Variety Approval Committee as a high-quality new green tea variety, becoming the fifth provincial-level new tea tree variety in our city after Mabian Lu 1, Chuanmu 28, Chuanmu 217 and others.

Compared with other tea tree varieties, the biggest characteristic of "Emei Wen Chun" is that it sprouts extremely early, with the picking period generally about 20 days earlier, making it an extra-early tea variety. The name "Emei Wen Chun" comes from this.

Now, two years have passed. This new tea tree variety has long been planted on a large scale, with the city's planting scale reaching more than 1,500 mu. As an extra-early tea variety, how good are the excellent traits of "Emei Wen Chun" exactly? The reporter recently went deep into the "Emei Wen Chun" tea plantation to find out for everyone.

Du Guangyan is the chairman of the Qianwei Kouchun Tea Planting Professional Cooperative. His other identity is the breeder of the new tea tree variety "Emei Wen Chun", and he participated in the asexual propagation and cultivation process of "Emei Wen Chun". In order to study the suitability, high yield, high quality and other characteristics of the new "Emei Wen Chun" variety, Du Guangyan successively transferred more than 500 mu of barren hills in Jinji Village, Mindong Township, Qianwei County and Lianmeng Village, Shixi Town, and planted them with "Emei Wen Chun" tea trees. Among them, Jinji Village in Mindong Township is the earliest concentrated area where Du Guangyan introduced and demonstrated the planting.

In October 2013, he transferred barren hills in Jinji Village and concentrated on clearing and planting nearly 200 mu of "Emei Wen Chun" tea seedlings. Now, more than two years have passed, and the tea seedlings of that year have become a lush green expanse.

Climbing up the mountain along the concrete steps, one sees on the tips of clumps of deep-green tea branches a stretch of tender green new leaves and tea buds. After more than two years of growth, under scientific field management, these tea trees have basically formed a canopy and are growing well, showing excellent traits such as good branching ability, strong tenderness retention and uniform consistency, with their characteristics of early sprouting and rapid germination and growth being especially prominent.

According to Du Guangyan, although the tea trees in this tea plantation have only undergone two deep prunings and have just entered the small-picking year, the tea buds are growing gratifyingly, with single buds large and strong and plenty of buds, with an average of about 3 buds sprouting from each leaf stalk. Most importantly, this tea plantation was already being picked as early as January 20 this year, the earliest picking time among local tea plantations, almost a full month earlier than tea trees of other varieties, making it a veritable extra-early tea variety.

Sprouting extremely early and with the picking period advanced, the new tea made is brought to market early, and the price of the tea naturally will not be low. According to Du Guangyan, just this year, his pre-Qingming tea's fresh leaves of one bud and one leaf sold for about 120 yuan per kg, and the price of pure single buds was even higher. Such a good market lies in seizing the opportunity of being "early".

The word "early" not only allowed Du Guangyan to seize the initiative in tea prices, but also, because of the time difference, made it easier to hire tea pickers, avoiding a situation of labor shortage during the concentrated picking period. Du Guangyan values this point quite highly.

Now, after nearly 3 months of small picking, this tea plantation has already brought Du Guangyan 250,000 yuan in income, giving him an initial taste of the benefits. Because this tea tree variety sprouts well, after the first season of spring tea, he has already begun picking the second season of spring tea. With a full extra season of picking volume compared with other tea tree varieties, Du Guangyan has become even more confident in planting "Emei Wen Chun" tea trees.