Plantation Crops

Type of pruning in tea

Types of pruning

• The criterion for determining the height of pruning should be the thickness of branches.
  Generally, a 4-year pruning cycle is followed in the mid elevation areas and 5-year cycle at high elevations.
  
  
  1.  Skiffing: It is a lightest pruning. Here foliage is leveled off, only green stems are removed. Here top 5 – 8 cm new growth is removed so as to obtain uniform level of plucking surface. If the bushes are pruned about 75cm, it is referred to as skiffing. In plains of north-east India, tea is pruned every year when bushes enter the dormant phase.
     
     
     Though this method is no longer practiced, bushes are cut very lightly every year and this is called skiffing. Nowadays, certain estates do not do skiffing every year and leave the bushes unpruned for 2 successive years. At the end of the pruned year, the bushes may be skiffed deep, medium, light or level. Skiffing may be repeated for 2-6 years. Deep skiffing is given at a height mid-way between pruning and tipping levels. In medium skiff, the cut is nearer to the tipping height, say 5cm below the tipping height/ Bushes which have been light or level skiffed are not tipped.
     
     
     The introduction of skiffing in place of pruning in north-eastern India has helped to increase the productivity. However, skiffed bushes are more prone to drought and they get heavily infested by pests such as ed spider mite and tea mosquito bug.
     
     
  2.   Tipping: It is the first round of harvesting of young shoots. Good frames could be developed with correct tipping. The first plucking of recovering bushes is called tipping. The objective of tipping is to establish a level plucking surface, to provide adequate maintenance foliage for the quick production of secondary branches.
     
     
  3.  Lung pruning or fringe pruning: Here criss cross branches are removed so that bush maintains a uniform height. Here all the leaves below the pruning level are left including peripheral branches. In this method dieback and death of plants is minimized.
     
     
  4.  Medium pruning: To check the bush growing to a inconvenient height this type of pruning is practiced. It stimulates new wood and maintenance foliage at lower level. It is done occasionally (once in 12 to 18 years). Medium style of pruning refers to pruning between 45 and 55cm.
     
     
  5.  Rehabitation pruning or collar pruning: 30 to 40 cm height. It is deep/heavy/severe pruning done to rejuvenate the bush when plants become uneconomical to maintain and grown out of hand. Here bush is cut off at ground level. Since this type of pruning is more severe casualties of plants may be high.
     
     
     A pruning height of 30-40cm is termed a hard prune when primary frames are healthy and if secondary branches have numerous knots and are cankered, a hard or medium pruning becomes necessary. In such cases, pruning is done into the secondary wood.