Xiaomin Wen^1,2

1 Wenzhou Qinggeng Yudu Agricultural Development Co. Ltd., Pingyang, 325405, Zhejiang, China
2 Zhejiang Agronomist College, Hangzhou, 310021, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2026, Vol. 17, No. 5   
Received: 05 Sep., 2026    Accepted: 06 Oct., 2026    Published: 14 Oct., 2026

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This study examines the effects of harvesting frequency, plucking standards, leaf retention, pruning, and related resource management practices on sustained tea production. Thirty English-language research articles were selected for analysis, with direct experiments on tea plants distinguished from observational comparisons, molecular association studies, and mechanistic evidence from other species. The analysis identifies three interacting processes involved in sustained tea production: maintaining the continuous development of harvestable shoots, preserving functional leaves and stored resources, and rebuilding a canopy structure suited to the intended harvesting system. Through a comparative case analysis, this study finds that the effects of mechanical harvesting should be distinguished from differences in harvesting intervals. Earlier bud development or increased shoot weight also does not necessarily indicate higher annual yield. Based on these findings, the study proposes an integrated evaluation framework that considers cumulative marketable yield, recovery time, canopy function, product quality, labor requirements, and environmental costs. The central expectation is not that less intensive harvesting or stronger canopy restoration will always lead to better production performance. Rather, explicitly considering plant recovery processes is expected to improve the reliability of production decisions and reveal trade-offs among different production objectives that may be overlooked when evaluating a single successful harvest.

Tea (Camellia sinensis); Harvesting practices; Canopy restoration; Shoot regeneration; Yield stability; Sustainable tea production