Abstract:
Tea (Camellia sinensis) is a woody ever green perennial tree. Different tea cultivar has different growth characteristics. The shoot replacement cycle is a measure of the time taken (days) for an axillary bud to grow into a shoot suitable for harvesting when released from apical dominance (Carr, 2000). There are three principal yield components in tea, namely the number of shoots harvested (per m2), the mean shoot dry mass at harvest (g) and the time taken for an axillary bud to grow into a shoot suitable for harvesting (Carr, 2000). Tea shoot growth varies with the clone, the season, inputs such as nitrogen (N), and stage in the pruning cycle.
According to the hand book on tea the removal of leaf bearing branches in a tea bush at a given height is called pruning. This may also affect the pattern of shoot growth too. Investigating shoot growth pattern and factors affecting are very help full to determine the suitable plucking policies (Wijeratne, 2001) and it may also help to decide the other management practices to maximize the yield.
