NEEM AS AN EFFECTIVE BIOCONTROL AGENT FOR TEA PESTS

Plucking average, thereby, cost of harvesting of tea cannot be viewed in isolation as they are a product of multiple factors such as 'jat', age from pruning, height of bush and plucker, harvesting intervals and nutritional and health status of the bush. Use of mechanical implements, either hand-operated or motorized, if motorized, either held by one or two-men or self-propelled, contribute significantly to cost reduction in harvesting. However, choice of an appropriate implement to suit to the prevailing conditions in a region should be made carefully, lest the mechanization result in crop depression. Hand operated shears are currently in wide use without detriment to quality. The results with motorized, one or two-men held machines are varying, often leading to depression in quality and yield. They are in use in Japan, Russia, Argentina, Australia, Indonesia and Taiwan, but, in the importing countries they are proving uneconomic because of their high price and cost of maintenance; there is, thus, a need to develop machine(s) indigenously. The mounted, self-propelled machines are of limited application because of constraints in their manoeuvrability on gradients over 5°.