Green leafhopper, also known as small green floating dust, scientific name jacobbiasca formosana paoli, English name smalller greenleaf-hopper, tea green leaf-hopper, tea jassid, commonly known as smoke boy, Zhao smoke, jumping boy, green boy, is a pest commonly occurring in tea gardens, taxonomically belongs to the order Homoptera, leafhopper family. Footprints can be seen throughout the year, with 14 generations occurring in a year, with the shortest number of days per generation occurring in May-September, only 16-19 days, and the longest being 12-3 months, reaching 71 days, with an average of 30.3 days in the whole year. With the young leaf tips as their harmful objects, nymphs and adults use the mouthparts to insert into the young shoot leaf tissue, absorb the nutrient, so that the development of tea buds is hindered, the affected young leaves and young shoots are yellow-green, when the damage is serious, the tea buds are not long, the leaves are boat-shaped, the leaf edges become brown, and finally fall off.
When the little green leafhopper sucks the nutrient solution of the young buds of the tea leaves with a stinging mouthpart, the tea plant's own defense system is activated, emitting a strong floral or honey fragrance, which is used to inform the natural enemy of the small green leafhopper, the "White Spotted Hunting Spider", to come and help eat the little green leafhopper.
The black tea or green tea of the honey tea series is made from the tea elite that is harmed by the small green leafhopper, and its harm is one of the main factors affecting the quality of honey tea. The number of small green leafhopper insects in the tea garden is an important factor that determines the quality of tea elites, generally making green tea or bao seed tea is not to want tea elites to be harmed by small green leafhoppers, so as not to affect the quality; but the production of honey fragrant black tea or green tea instead requires small green leafhoppers to suck tea buds, sometimes it is unattainable, which is also a particularly precious and rare place of honey tea. So is the little green leafhopper beneficial (good) insect or pest? Different results will be presented depending on the type of tea made.
The number of its ethnic groups is often affected by the management of tea plantations, the field environment, climatic factors, and the body of tea trees. In order to create an environment suitable for the small green leafhoppers to inhabit, in recent years, the cultivation mode of tea gardens has gradually shifted towards reducing pesticide spraying and paying attention to ecological or organic cultivation methods.