Shade in Tea Plantations: A New Dimension with an Agroforestry Approach for a Climate-Smart Agricultural Landscape System

Tea is considered as a shade-loving plant. Hence, tea thrives best in a system where it is grown under a canopy of shade trees. Many species of shade trees are in use across the tea-growing countries of the world. Benefits of shade trees include modification of microclimate by decreasing the incident radiation, temperature, and wind speed and increasing the relative humidity. Shade also has many other beneficial effects on photosynthesis and other physiological processes, growth and yield of tea. It mitigates climate change impacts and provides ecosystem services. Considering all the beneficial effects, this paper discusses the importance and potential of shade trees in a system approach as an agroforestry, in region- and country-specific climate-smart landscape models, as the way forward.