Tea Pruner

a machine that is used to prune tea plants in order to promote the development of shoots and to form rows of plants that are suitable for the mechanical picking of tea leaves.

Mounted tea pruners equipped with a pruning device having a segmented cutter are used on tea plantations in the USSR. Such a tea pruner may be mounted on a tractor, on a tool carriage, or on a mechanical tea-leaf plucker. Three types of tea pruners are used in the USSR. The first type, such as the ADV-1.3, cuts the tips of the shoots, shortening height by 5 cm. The second type—for example, the BShP-lA—forms rows 60–80 cm wide and 50–70 cm high and shapes the crowns of tea bushes into semiovals by cutting the bushes from the top and the sides. The third type, such as the APP-600A, is used to condition tea plantations by pruning tea plants to a height of 40–45 cm from the root collar.

Tea pruners can prune 0.08–0.13 hectare of tea plants per hour.