Integrated Tea Pest Management

    General survey on the occurrence of insect pests and diseases in tea garden was conducted. The morphological, biological characters of insect pests and diseases and their evolutional properties as well as control methods were systematically investigated. The IPM (Integrated Pest Management) strategy was consequently developed to control pest populations in tea gardens below the levels causing economic loss. This strategy relies primarily on agronomical measures and adopts biological means such as application of bio-pesticides (e.g. fungi, virus, plant extracts, natural enemies, etc.). Chemical pesticides are used only in the cases when the pest populations could not be efficiently controlled by other means. The research achievements got the second- and third-grade Prizes for the Advancement in Science and Technology granted by the Ministry of Agriculture.

    Several kinds of special bio-pesticides for the application in tea gardens, such as whitefly-fungi, leafhopper-fungi, EoNPV, EpNPV were developed. Pilot-scale production of these bio-pesticides was formulated after bench procedures were established. The efficacies of the fungi pesticides and NPV pesticides in the tea gardens surpassed 75% and 95%, respectively. They were applied in organic, green-food and no-pollution tea gardens in the range of several ten thousand hectares.