Mites have long been a trouble for tea plantations in Zhangping, a county-level?city in?Southeast China's?Fujian province, reducing tea yields and farmers'incomes.

The city has more than 6,000 hectares of tea plantations and a tea industry valued at 2 billion yuan ($301.7 million).

To improve the quality of its tea products, Zhangping introduced predatory mites to the tea plantations in 2008. The predatory mites prey on the mite pests in a kind of bio-control through natural enemies.

The technologies that led to predatory mites came from Zhang Yanxuan, a researcher at the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Zhang Yanxuan (right), researcher at the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, checks the quality of the tea in the plantation after introduction of predatory mites.[photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]