Tea Production in Japan and in the World

Abstract

Tea is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. Tea (Camellia sinensis) belongs to the genus Camellia. C. sinensis has two varieties, sinensis and assamica. Tea is thought to have originated in Yunnan Province of China. The total amount of tea production in the world was 5,812,000 t in 2017. China was the largest tea producer and India was the second-largest producer. Indonesia was in sixth place and Japan was in ninth place. The custom of drinking tea was introduced into Japan from China in the early part of the eighth century. Tea plants had been introduced to Japan a little before then. Japanese native tea plants belong to C. sinensis var. sinensis. The total tea production area in Japan in 2018 was 41.500 ha, and total amount of tea production in Japan in 2018 was 81,500 t. Most of the tea produced in Japan is steamed green tea. Some types of microbiological fermentation tea are produced in mountainous areas. These teas are similar to teas produced in Yunnan province and the surrounding areas. Small-scale black tea production has recently been increasing. In 2016, the total amount of revenue from tea production in Japan was 96 billion yen (827 million dollars), accounting for 1% of the total revenue from agricultural production. Fertilizer costs accounted for 30% of the total production costs. Since amino acid gives green tea a sweet and brothy taste, more than 500 kg per ha of nitrogen fertilizer has been applied to tea fields in Japan. Excess use of nitrogen fertilizer has caused many problems such as strong acidification of soil, pollution of ground water and increase in Mechanical tea harvesting is now popular except for special type of tea. Over 98% of the tea fields in Japan are covered with clonal plants. The leading cultivar ‘Yabukita’ is grown in 74% of the total tea production area. With the growth of the Japanese economy after the mid-1950’s, many people living in agricultural areas moved to urban areas and mechanical harvesting was introduced to overcome the labor shortage problem. Clonal cultivars were also introduced to make the tea shoot lengths and budding times uniform and to prevent degradation of tea quality. The daily wage for tea pluckers is about $100.