China's first self-propelled automatic tea leaf plucking machine succeeded in its prototype test in Jiangsu Province early this September.

The so-called 4CJ-20 type self-propelled automatic tea leaf plucking machine was invented by a research team lead by Professor XIAO Hong-ru from the Nanjing Research Institute for Agricultural Mechanization (NRIAM) of CAAS. It has a 1.2-meter-wide globoidal reciprocating clipper, which can be adjusted to the height of tea tree crowns. In the field operation, tea leaves can be properly cut off by the clipper and subsequently be collected into a bag by using the electric leaf collection device. Compared with other manual machines, the 4CJ-20 self-propelled automatic tea leaf plucking machine has the obvious advantages of high efficiency and low labor cost, is the first innovation in China.