Due to the influence of multiple low-temperature cold waves last winter and this spring, there is a trend toward increased occurrence of diseases such as tea blister blight. The main diseases and pests occurring in tea gardens across the country include the tea green leafhopper, gray tea looper, tea looper, tea hairy caterpillar, tea thrips, pest mites, black tea scale, angular tea leaf beetle, tea lace bug, green plant bug, tea blister blight, and anthracnose. To effectively control the major tea tree diseases and pests in 2024 and ensure tea production and quality safety, the National Agricultural Technical Extension Center has developed this plan.
Control Objectives
Achieve a treatment rate of over 90% for major diseases and pests, an overall control efficacy of over 80%, keep the loss due to disease and pest damage under 8%, and reach a green control coverage rate of over 60%.
Control Strategy
Implement a green control strategy for tea tree diseases and pests based on ecological regulation and agronomic measures, with a focus on physical and chemical luring control and biological control, supplemented by scientific use of pesticides. Prioritize fitness cultivation, immunological induction, sex pheromone trapping, light trapping, color board trapping, biopesticides, and protection and utilization of natural enemies. Use scientific applications of highly effective, low-risk pesticides to integrate unified control with green control to ensure tea quality safety and the ecological safety of tea gardens.
Control Measures
(1) Key Control Targets by Region
1. South China Tea Zone: Primarily includes Hainan, southern Yunnan, central and southern Guangdong, southern Guangxi, and southeastern Fujian. Focus on controlling the tea green leafhopper, Coffee red spider mite, gray tea looper, tea hairy caterpillar, angular blind bug, tea Orange spider mite, angular tea leaf beetle, tea yellow thrips, black tea scale, tea blister blight, and anthracnose. Closely monitor the tea borer weevil, black tea tussock moth, and tea leaf roller.
2. Southwest China Tea Zone: Primarily includes central and northern Yunnan, southeastern Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Chongqing. Focus on controlling the tea green leafhopper, tea thrips, pest mites, green plant bug, black tea scale, gray tea looper (tea looper), tea hairy caterpillar, tea blister blight, and anthracnose. Closely monitor the black tea tussock moth and tea white spot disease.
3. Jiangnan Tea Zone: Primarily includes northern Guangdong, northern Guangxi, northern Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, southeastern and western Hubei, Anhui, and southern Jiangsu. Focus on controlling the tea green leafhopper, gray tea looper, tea looper, tea orange spider mite, black tea scale, tea hairy caterpillar, angular tea leaf beetle, tea lace bug, anthracnose, and tea blister blight. Closely monitor the tea red spider mite, black tea tussock moth, tea aphid, tea borer weevil, tea white spot disease, and other pests.
4. Jiangbei Tea Zone: Primarily includes northern Hubei, northern Anhui, northern Jiangsu, southeastern Shandong, southern Henan, southern Shaanxi, and southern Gansu. Focus on controlling the tea green leafhopper, gray tea looper, tea orange spider mite, tea lace bug, green plant bug, tea hairy caterpillar, black tea scale, tea blister blight, and anthracnose. Closely monitor the tea aphid and tea leaf miner.
(2) Key Control Technologies for Major Diseases and Pests
1. Tea Green Leafhopper: Maintain natural vegetation around tea gardens, intercrop with herbaceous and woody plants, and leave grass naturally along the edges of the garden during autumn and winter to provide shelters for spiders and parasitoid wasps, enhancing the ecological control potential. During the production season, harvest frequently at appropriate times and remove weeds between rows to control the pest population. After pruning at the end of the Spring Tea season, hanging insect traps can significantly reduce the number of leafhoppers during the first peak. Control agents that can be used include eucalyptus oil, azadirachtin, carvacrol, tea saponins, plumbagin, indoxacarb, chlorfenapyr, and flonicamid.
2. Gray Tea Looper (Tea Looper): Combine soil cultivation and fertilization in the tea garden during autumn to turn over the soil and reduce the survival rate of overwintering pupae. Install insect traps in tea gardens where the gray tea looper (tea looper) commonly occurs and turn them on during the peak emergence period to lure and kill adult insects; place sex pheromone traps during the adult emergence period to lure male insects. Protect and utilize important natural enemies such as the tea looper cocoon wasp, single white cocoon wasp, and spiders. The appropriate timing for control should be when the 1st and 2nd generations or the 5th and 6th generations are in their early larval stages. Control agents that can be used include cabbage looper nucleopolyhedrovirus, Beauveria bassiana CQMa421, Bacillus thuringiensis, Pseudomonas spp., matrine, and lambda-cyhalothrin.
3. Tea Hairy Caterpillar: Utilize the clustering habits of tea hairy caterpillar larvae for manual capture. Install insect traps in tea gardens where the tea hairy caterpillar commonly occurs and turn them on during the peak emergence period to lure and kill adult insects; place sex pheromone traps during the adult emergence period to trap male insects. The appropriate timing for control should be when the larvae are young. Control agents that can be used include cabbage looper nucleopolyhedrovirus, Bacillus thuringiensis, Pseudomonas spp., matrine, bifenthrin, and lambda-cyhalothrin.
4. Tea Orange Spider Mite, Tea Red Spider Mite, and Coffee Red Spider Mite: Harvest frequently at appropriate times to remove some adults, eggs, and nymphs. Use lime-sulfur or mineral oil for winter closure. During the peak of pest mite outbreaks, control agents such as mineral oil and plumbagin can be used.
5. Black Tea Scale: Improve garden management, thin out branches, and clear the garden to promote ventilation and light transmission to suppress the pest's occurrence. At the beginning of the peak emergence period of the overwintering generation, use fully biodegradable insect traps to lure and kill adult insects. During the peak hatching period of the 1st generation, spray control agents such as lambda-cyhalothrin, bifenthrin, and thiamethoxam. In fields with high overwintering populations, lime-sulfur or mineral oil can be used for winter closure.
6. Tea Thrips: Harvest frequently at appropriate times to worsen the nutritional conditions and shelters, removing some eggs, nymphs, and adults. Before the peak outbreak, blue (for tea stick thrips) or yellow-green (for tea yellow thrips) insect traps can be used to lure and kill adult insects. Control agents that can be used include azadirachtin, plumbagin, and mineral oil.
7. Angular Tea Leaf Beetle: When closing the garden in winter, apply fertilizer and turn the soil to a depth of 20 cm to reduce the overwintering larval population. Place fully biodegradable yellow boards within the tea canopy, replacing them once they are full. Control agents that can be used include Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, and matrine. For severely affected tea gardens, use lambda-cyhalothrin or indoxacarb to control other pests when the adult insects begin to emerge.
8. Tea Lace Bug: During winter garden management, check and remove leaves with eggs, and during the spring, remove leaves with nymphs. Improve garden ventilation and light transmission by thinning branches. Biocontrol agents such as matrine and azadirachtin can be used for biological control; when the outbreak is severe, it can be controlled simultaneously with other pests using imidacloprid or lambda-cyhalothrin.
9. Green Plant Bug: Remove wormwood weeds. Biocontrol agents such as matrine and Beauveria