“Due to abundant rainfall this year, vine tea picking time has been delayed by about a week,” said He Xinzhong, head of Tengfa Agriculture Company, adding that the vine tea here is harvested by villagers from April to November every year. The tender leaves can be picked every 5 days, and all the old leaves are picked before frosting and sold to herbal medicine companies. It has been sold to Guangxi, Guangdong and other places. The skilled tea farmers can harvest 18 kilograms a day, with the income of 216 yuan. 

 

The vine tea is purely natural and pollution-free, which has the effects of clearing heat, detoxifying, moisturizing the throat, and promoting lung function. It is easy to be planted and can be harvested for many years, with a short growth cycle and fewer diseases and pests. 

 

As the extraction of dihydromyricetin from vine tea becomes increasingly popular for use in medicine, vine tea has a great market potential. 

 

Dongquan Village has made efforts to develop the cultivation of vine tea based on local natural conditions such as mountains, forests, and waters, and achieved a double harvest of tender and old leaves by cooperating with biological extraction enterprises.

 

 

 

In recent years, with the help of the government and agricultural experts in Luyang Town, Dongquan Village has formed a complete industrial chain involving seedling cultivation, picking, precision processing, sales, and tourism by revitalizing idle labor, and continued efforts to promote vine tea cultivation and improve production capacity.

 

At present, the base has 8 mu (about 0.53 hectares) of vine tea seedlings, with a production capacity of 300,000 seedlings per mu (about 0.067 hectares) and a production value of nearly 5.76 million yuan. It has provided jobs for more than 120 local villagers and paid nearly 2 million yuan in wages.

 

Next, Rucheng County will continue to enhance the reputation of geographical indication tea brands such as Rucheng Baimao Tea and Vine Tea, so as to promote the high-quality development of the county’s tourism economy.