Continuous rain causes tea in Nghe An to have root rot and leaf fungus.

(Baonghean.vn) - Continuous rains cause water to soak into tea plants, leading to root rot and fungus on leaves, making tea growers in Con Cuong anxious.

As soon as the rain stopped, Ms. Dang Thi Thuc's family in Tan Lap village, Bong Khe commune had to mobilize human resources to harvest 7 sao of tea. Ms. Thuc said: During the dry season, on average, it takes 60 days for a tea plant to be harvested, but with heavy rain and high humidity like now, the tea plant only needs 45 days to be harvested. However, this tea crop was infected with fungus due to heavy rain, so the yield decreased.

Many tea areas are flooded, causing root rot and fungal infections due to prolonged rain. Photo: Ba Hau

Like Ms. Thuc's family, Mr. Dang Van Sang's family in Tan Lap village, Bong Khe commune also mobilized manpower and rented machines to cut tea. Mr. Sang said that with 2 sao of tea, the previous crops had good growth due to alternating sunshine and rain, and the tea plants had a yield of nearly 2 tons. But this crop of tea had a lot of rain, the tea roots were soaked with water and rotted, some plants died on their own, and some leaves were infected with fungus, so the yield dropped to only 1.3 tons. Not only did the yield decrease, but the price of tea also dropped from 38,000 VND/ha to 30,000 VND/ha.

Ms. Dang Thi Thuc is sad because tea productivity has decreased due to heavy rain. Photo: Ba Hau

Mr. Nguyen Tien Sanh, head of Tan Lap village, Bong Khe commune, said: The whole village has 34.6 hectares of tea that are being harvested. In the previous months, the weather was favorable, the tea had a good harvest and good prices, so the people were very excited. But in the past two months, heavy rain has caused low humidity, so most of the tea area in the village has been infected with fungus, reducing productivity by more than 30%. People are very anxious that if it continues to rain, they will not be able to spray fungicide, which will affect the productivity of the next crop.

Heavy rain causes tea plants to rot, fungus appears... leading to reduced productivity. Photo: Ba Hau

Bong Khe commune currently has 47 hectares of industrial tea plantations owned by local people, mostly concentrated in villages such as Tan Lap, Tan Tra, Lam Tra, and village 2/9. With the characteristics of flat tea plantation land without slope, when encountering prolonged rainy weather like the recent past, the amount of water cannot drain, creating favorable conditions for pests to develop, especially fungi.

According to Mr. Nguyen Khac Sy - Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Con Cuong district, although the district has inspected and instructed people to spray pesticides, the current weather conditions are very worrying./.

Minh Hanh - Ba Hau