Sucking pest management in tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze) cultivation: Integrating conventional methods with bio-control strategies

Worldwide sucking pests predominantly impact the cultivation of tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze), an economically significant crop. Sucking pests consume the plant sap by puncturing the vascular tissue of the host plant. Their trophic activity results in the curling of the tea leaves, followed by a dark brown or silver appearance with black spots. Sometimes, the symptom is confined to dry, dark, and dead leaves. All these symptoms have significantly reduced tea production over the past few decades. Sucking pests like mosquito bugs, thrips, jassids, aphids, and mites are primarily responsible for these damages in tea plants. It is crucial to use all the available eco-friendly resources to effectively implement integrated pest management strategies that reduce the sucking pest population in the tea plant ecosystem and produce pesticide-free tea. This review gives a comprehensive idea of sucking pests in tea plantations, their habits, age-old traditional methods used to control such pests, widely used synthetic pesticide treatments for instant pest control, pesticide tolerance management, and lastly, emerging sustainable methods to minimise the level of pesticide residue in this foliage crop. All these practices will help to decrease the adversities caused by pesticides to the environment.