Abstract
A new type of pest control machine was developed by the Kagoshima Institute for Agricultural Development and the Matsumotokiko Corporation. In the second crop of the tea season, the effectiveness of this machine in reducing feeding damage from tea green leafhoppers, Empoasca onukii Matsuda, was investigated in a pesticide-free tea field. We compared the number of collected leaf hoppers, the length of new shoots, degree of feeding damage by leaf hoppers and tea yields between treated plots and untreated plots in order to evaluate the effects of the treatment by this machine. Treatment with this machine was conducted once or twice in a week from bud break to plucking. As a result, the number of collected leaf hoppers was significantly different after two or three times of treatment and the degree of feeding damage in treated plots was statistically lower than that of untreated plots.
