Mechanical harvesting in tea – A review

Abstract

Harvesting in tea with the help of mechanical aids was attempted at Tocklai in the middle of the 20th century. However, preference for hand-plucking, to maintain the quality of plucked leaves, had pushed the advantage of machines to the backstage. Moreover, the availability of labourers was not a constraint. During the eighties and nineties of the last century, experiments on machine harvesting gained importance in different tea growing countries of the world. Mechanical plucking aids like shears, hand held motorized machines and sometimes wheeled machines provide useful alternatives to manual harvesting, when labour is in short supply. By the use of machines and shears, pluckers’ productivity can be increased manifold, which will help in reducing the cost of tea production. This is an attempt to highlight various aspects of mechanized harvesting in relation to quality of plucked leaves, acceptability considerations, physiological and other related aspects, based on the work done in some of the major tea growing countries of the world.