Sustainable green tea production through agroecological management and land conversion practices for restoring soil health, crop productivity and economic efficiency: Evidence from Northern Vietnam

Abstract

Tea is a very important cash crop in Vietnam as it provides crucial income and employment for farmers in poor rural areas. Unfortunately, the dominance of long-term, conventional tea cultivation has caused severe soil health degradation and environmental pollution. At the same time, as tea production may provide a better net income compared with other annual crops such as rice and vegetables, farmers have been converting parts of their allocated land to cultivate tea plants. Little is known about the benefit of agroecological management as an alternative to conventional tea management practices, and thus, there is a need to understand how it can improve tea yields, quality and the livelihoods of the farmers. Conducted in Northern Vietnam from 2019 to 2022, this study examined the impacts of agroecological tea management practices on soil health indicators, tea yield and quality, and net income of tea farmers. We showed that agroecological management practices significantly enhanced soil organic matter by 0.8% and soil pH by 0.5 units on average. Conversely, conventional manage-

Soil health and ecosystem services

“…In comparison with chemical fertilizer applications, agroecological practice in tea farms significantly increased AMF frequency and intensity, soil macrofauna and mesofauna abundance. The tea yields were slightly lower, but still enabled farmers to earn $8400/ha/year owing to the production of higher quality organic tea (Le et al, 2023). Conservation tillage practices, including no‐till, ridge tillage and subsoiling tillage were found to all significantly increase soil organic carbon in North‐eastern China, but no‐till reduced crop yield in areas where mean annual temperature is below 3°C (He et al, 2022).…”

Prediction Model of Flavonoids Content in Ancient Tree Sun−Dried Green Tea under Abiotic Stress Based on LASSO−Cox

“…The present study selects ancient tree sun-dried green tea from Laowu Mountain as the research subjects and aims to explore the contribution of diverse environmental factors (for instance, altitude [17], soil pH [18], organic matter [19], and potassium content [20]) on the flavonoids content in sun-dried green tea. Through the construction of a multiple regression model, our goal is to explore the correlation between environmental factors and the content of flavonoids to provide a fundamental model for soil management [21] in ancient tea gardens, secondary metabolism in ancient tea trees [22], and quality prediction [23] and control of ancient tea [24]. Given the issue that the nomogram model is unable to exhibit multiple outcomes concurrently [24,25], this study successfully enhances the developed visualization system to achieve diverse representations of charts and data.…”