The golden autumn of August is the season when Osmanthus flowers fill the air with fragrance, a time of abundant harvest.

On the Tea mountain of Tuhongpo Tea Industry Co., Ltd. in Ziyun County, warm sunlight bathes the tender Green Tea leaves and beautiful flowers, creating a picturesque Landscape where the figures of tea pickers can be seen busily at work everywhere.

Not far away, Professor Jin Linhong from the National Key Laboratory of Green Pesticides at Guizhou University leads a group of graduate students in conducting field surveys on pest occurrence.

Professor Jin Linhong: This is an organic tea garden, and the main pests include tea thrips, tea stick thrips, green leafhoppers, and tea blister disease.

Under the guidance of Academician Song Bao'an, our team has been conducting demonstration trials here using natural predators, weed suppression, ecological regulation, and scientific pesticide application to manage pests.

Zhao Guoyu: In Guizhou, thrips reproduce every 20-30 days on average, producing 10-20 generations per year with overlapping generations, making them highly prone to developing resistance and significantly impacting the quality and yield of tea. Based on the biological characteristic that thrips pupate in the soil, we have developed the use of entomopathogenic nematodes as biocontrol agents for tea stick thrips and tea thrips. In April, we apply these nematodes once using a sprayer (one hundred million nematodes per acre) to the soil surface and then continue monitoring until August. The field control efficiency against thrips can reach around 65%, achieving the goal of not using chemical pesticides or significantly reducing their application frequency.

Lan Rongmeng: For above-ground pests, we release natural predator insects such as minute pirate bugs, lacewings, and mantises to control tea stick thrips, tea thrips, and green leafhoppers. In mid-to-late March, we release 200 minute pirate bugs per acre, followed by another 200 after half a month, releasing them twice. The field control efficiency can reach 70%, effectively keeping pests like tea stick thrips, tea thrips, and green leafhoppers below economic damage levels.

Professor Jin Linhong: We have planted many flowers in the tea gardens, building a “Tea Garden Flower Ocean” demonstration area. By using agricultural landscape ecology management methods, we enhance the ability of natural predators to control tea pests. Cosmos, marigolds, and Mexican hyssop can attract and sustain many minute pirate bugs, ladybugs, and other natural predators, forming a stable food web. While there may still be pests in the fields, they will not cause outbreaks. This is the effect we aim to achieve.

In this organic tea garden, we also conduct demonstrations of scientific pesticide use.

Currently, all major tea-producing counties in Guizhou Province are focusing on high-quality development of the tea industry, fully promoting the production of Autumn Tea, enhancing comprehensive utilization of resources, increasing industrial added value, promoting cost reduction and efficiency improvement for enterprises, and boosting farmers' income. Summer and autumn are peak periods for pest occurrence, and green pest management technologies are essential for ensuring safe production of autumn tea.

Tea garden manager: Our tea garden used to suffer greatly from pest infestations. Since it's an organic tea garden, we didn't dare to use any random pesticides, which greatly affected our yields, especially during the summer and autumn seasons.

Now, with the technical support from the professors at Guizhou University, we've made significant improvements in both pest management and general tea garden management. The quality of the tea is assured, and the yield has increased substantially. As you can see, even though it's already autumn, our tea gardens remain lush and verdant. After one round of picking, new shoots quickly grow back, ready for another harvest.

The green pest management work at the Tuhongpo Tea Industry in Ziyun County has received support and encouragement from various levels of leadership. A provincial-level field observation and training session on green pest management techniques in tea gardens was held here. This is just one example among many demonstration bases of the National Key Laboratory of Green Pesticides at Guizhou University. Similar work is ongoing in other cities and counties such as Puding, Pu'an, Leishan, Jinning, Sandu, and more. From technology development and demonstration trials to field schools, from tea and vegetables to sorghum and rice, the work on green pest management is always progressing.