 Dear learners, welcome to today's session. Today we shall discuss pruning of tea. After this discussion you will be able to explain the need of pruning, describe the purposes of pruning, define different types of pruning and skiffing, define a pruning cycle, know the factors affecting the choice of pruning cycle. As we all know that the economic yield of tea plant is the young tender shoots. Therefore, the tea plant which is a small tree by habit is trained to form a low boost from early years. That is basically the initial 4 to 5 years to form a plucking table at convenient height. This is done by adopting various operations in young tea and this has already been discussed in previous class under the unit Young Tea Management. Today we shall discuss the pruning and the pruning is basically done in mature tea around 5 years old and above. Now, what is pruning and why is it important? As you all know that tea is a perennial plant and being a perennial plant if we don't check the reproductive phase of the tea plant then it will grow into a tree producing fruits and flowers. So, in tea management practices in mature tea the boost management is done to keep the plant continuously in the vegetative phase so that we can achieve maximum suit. To achieve these paramount purposes the operation adopted is called as pruning. Pruning of tea is called as a necessary evil in the sense that in spite of the huge loss of crop due to pruning it has to be carried out periodically. The main purposes of pruning are as follows. To maintain a convenient height of the boost to facilitate plucking operations. To check the reproductive growth and maintain the boosts more or less in a vegetative phase. To stimulate the production of new sets of vigorously growing leafy branches replacing the old unproductive branches. To rejuvenate the boosts by removing the dead, diseased and paste infested branches which have crossed a period of maximum productivity. To maximise the formation of buzzy shoots in the plucking table and lastly to maintain the quality of the mate tea. Now the system of pruning. The system of mature tea pruning followed by most of the countries do not differ in principle but the day differ with the rigor to the time of pruning. Length of pruning cycle depending upon the climatic condition type of plant nature of tea produced. However, mature tea pruning in noticed India differ in certain respect from the pruning methods followed in other countries. Now let us first discuss about the pruning of maturity in noticed India and after that we shall learn about pruning in other countries. Now come to the another term called skiffing. What is skiffing? Actually earlier in the plains of noticed India tea was pruned annually when the boosts become dormant at the end of the growing seasons. And basically the tea boosts in this region in noticed region enters into the winter dormancy normally from December and does the boosts were pruned during this period. This annual pruning method is no longer followed but unlike in other parts of the world it is still a usual practice to cut the boosts every very lightly at the end of each seasons which we refer it as skiffing. What happened in present system of pruning in noticed India? In noticed India boosts are basically pruned at an interval of 2 to 4 years but we can do skiffing by doing giving a light cut to the boosts at the end of the every year. Leaving the boosts unpruned not pruning or skiffing at all for 1 or 2 years in between 2 prune years is also common in noticed India. And thus the introduction of skiffing has eliminated the necessity of pruning every year. Now let's have a look to the objective of skiffing. So what are the objective of skiffing? The basic objective of skiffing are to obtain an early crop, to obtain more flowers, to thicken the pruning wood and to improve the health of the boosts. Now come to the system of pruning. As a learners you should know that the system of pruning vary with the stages of the life of a t-boost. There are three systems of pruning. These are basically formative pruning, maintenance pruning and corrective pruning. We have already discussed about the formative pruning in previous class which is done to train the young t-plants to form a low boost. Now the different types of maintenance and corrective pruning as based on the severity of the cuts adopted on the t-art described here. Now what are the different types of maintenance and corrective pruning? There are basically four types of pruning. These are light pruning, medium pruning, heavy pruning and collar pruning. The light or top pruning is a maintenance pruning. It is cut given 4 to 5 cm above the last prune level. The last prune level means the pruning operation done during a final frame forming operation in young t-management. What is medium pruning? When the height of the boosts frame rises to an unmanageable height that is beyond 80 cm, due to the repeated light pruning it is cut back to the height above the original frame forming prune. And this type we should follow the medium pruning. Now what is heavy pruning? The sole objective of heavy pruning is to improve the yielding capacity of some old but reasonably good section of tea to minimize the loss of crop during uprooting and replanting of the uneconomic sections. Now collar pruning. This is the severest form of pruning in which the entire above ground portion is cut leaving only the maximum of 10 cm when the boosts frame becomes unproductive and the root system is still healthy. It is also known as down pruning. Now come to the different types of skiffing, skiffs. There are four types of skiffs, desserts, deep skiff, medium skiff. So what is actually deep skiff? One year after light pruning, what happened? Deep skiff is done between the pruning and tipping level. For example, if the tea plants are tipped at a height of 20 cm, then deep skiff is given at 10 cm above the previous pruning level. You can see in the picture what is then medium skiff. The medium skiff is done to remove the crow's feet. So what is crow's feet? It is a structure or knot formed in the plucking table where a number of new flasks or suits have developed from the same height due to repeated plucking. You can see in the picture what is a crow's feet. So the main aim of medium skiff is to remove this crow's feet. Now light skiff. This is a skiff done at or up to 1 cm above the previous tipping level. That is just deep enough to remove the majority of the plucking points but to keep the crow's feet. The light skiff don't remove the crow's feet. Then level of skiff. What is level of skiff? This is a skiff to remove the plucking points and the old leaves that stick above the plucking table at the end of the seasons. This cut is given at least 5 cm above the previous tipping level or at the same level of tipping level. You can see in the picture the level of skiff and the tipping level. Now what is the time of skiffing? The time of skiffing basically in the northeast India is anytime between mid December and January. So now skiffing during the growing seasons. So what happen under some unavoidable situation if the bushes cannot be plucked for 2 to 3 weeks it may be required to skiff the bushes. So in order to keep the crop lost to the minimum skiffing should be completed as far as possible before the first week of September in the plains and in the mid August in hills. Now come to the time of pruning. Pruning should be done in the cold weather that is between mid November to mid January under noticed Indian conditions. In general at the optimum time of the year to prune is when the plant is dormant or its growth rate is slowest and carbohydrate reserve in the roots are high. The exact time depends on the locality, climate, crop and quality requirement, seasonal crop distributions, susceptibility to the paste and diseases. Now what is pruning cycle? So pruning cycle can be defined as the interval of time between 2 successive prune. Substitution of annual pruning by longer pruning cycle through the introduction of skiffing or unpruned generally increases the productivity of the bush. However we cannot lengthen the pruning cycle beyond 4 years. If we do so what happen some of the branches will become very thick leading to the reduction in the number of pruning sticks. Therefore the optimum pruning cycle followed generally 2 to 4 years. Now choice of pruning cycle, choice of pruning cycles depends on various factors. The factors are like crops and quality requirement with the tea of normal vigorous generally higher yields are obtained with the lighter cuts or with longer pruning cycles. Then crop durations, it depends on crop distributions. Pruning and skiffing methods can be profitably utilized to obtain increased and evenly distributed crops. By a careful admixture of various forms of skiff and prune in any tea garden it is possible to increase the yield and even outer crop distribution. The third factors is paste and disease incidence. What happen unpruned or light skiff bushes are more susceptible to disease and paste incidences. There are host of paste such as mites, caterpillars, scales insect, heliopelts, thrips as well as various diseases like black rot etc. Then compare to the deep skiffed or pruned tea. Might thrives on the foliage during the winter and start multiplying next season as soon as the weather warms up. The residual population is directly related to the amount of foliage left at the time of pruning or skiffing. So it is important factors that impact the choice of pruning cycle. The next factor is climate and soil. Climate and soil of a region also affect the choice of a pruning cycle. The important elements of a climate is basically rainfall distribution and the temperature. Light texture soils have low moisture holding capacity and are more prone to drought. In drought areas or drought areas unbrut sections suffers more from drought than the pruned section. So if drought prone area wish to introduce unpruned years in their pruning cycle then good set must be ensured in the unpruned sections. The last one is the labour availability. So what happen unpruned and light skiffed sections require approximately 30-40% more mandates for plucking compared to pruned or deep skiffed teas. Hence labour availability is also a very important factor to select the choice of a pruning cycle. So with this I conclude today's session. Thank you.