STiR coffee and tea magazine

36 STiR coffee and tea | 2026 Quarter 1 Spring (Mar/Apr/May) After harvesting, the leaves usually follow the same route back out of the forest before reaching a processing fa- cility, and they don't always arrive un- scathed. "Issues in transportation show up in [forest] tea pretty often," says Sha- fer. "Tea pickers use big bags to carry the leaves. The leaves get hot in the bags and bruised from the arduous hiking trails." Flaws like these can undermine the over- all quality of some forest teas, eroding their market performance. Regardless, tea pickers continue to brave the underbrush, enticed by payouts that are magnitudes greater than ordi- nary tea harvests. Prices vary annually, but wild tea tends to command higher rates. Shafer reports that the price of one kilogram of unprocessed wild tea buds used to make the Vietnamese tea known as móng rồng shot up to VND 700,000- 750,000 (approximately $27-29) in the most recent season. "When the season started, it was about VND 400,000 and then rose day by day," he notes. "It takes about 3 kilos of raw buds to make 1 kilo of dried tea." Ecological costs Unfortunately, rapid price spikes like this also lead to over-harvesting and other forms of lasting ecological damage. In both China and Vietnam, incidents have been recorded of tea harvesters rushing to pick as much tea as possible while the fleeting window of high prices remains open, or taking other dramatic actions. For instance, in a 2021 opinion piece published by Guangming Daily, Lan Zengquan, a professor at Southwest For- estry University in Kunming, cites an inci- dent of villagers clearing natural growth in conservation zones to plant additional tea trees and reap higher profits, destabilizing the ecosystem and weakening existing old- growth wild tea species in the process. In China, Vietnam, and Laos, locals have reported cases of harvesters chop- ping down wild tea trees to get at tea leaves that are too far above the ground to reach by normal means, or excessively pruning or hacking the bark of tea trees to encourage bud growth, often permanent- ly weakening or killing the plants. Even then, some harvesters may continue pick- ing whatever they can get. "You see some people with these little nub buds the size of a few grains of rice now," says Shafer. "They just harvest as soon as possible." Stronger tea trees with greater resilience to climate change and diseases may be brew- ing on Vietnam's horizon. A 2025 study by scientists at the Foundation for Sciences and Technology Development of Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 found that ancient as- samica trees growing wild in rich biodiverse settings in northern Vietnam exhibit distinct morphological and biochemical characteristics, making them genetically diverse and essential to tea conservation. Researchers trekked into the foggy mountains of Vietnam's northwestern province of Lao Cai, where they examined sixteen wild old-growth assamica tea specimens scat- tered across a variety of microclimates at elevations ranging from 900 to 1400 meters. DNA testing revealed high genetic diversity among the populations surveyed, findings that, according to the report, "provide important molecular data to support broader con- servation planning and guide selective breeding." The report goes on to note that such genetic data could "support breeding efforts aimed at developing elite cultivars adapted to the mountainous regions of northern Viet- nam," a particularly pressing task in the face of climate change and habitat destruction, which are predicted to reduce the suitable cultivation area for Camellia sinensis var. sinensis by 15-32%, and for C. sinensis var. assamica by 32-34% by 2050. While the specific traits of the trees examined in Lao Cai have yet to be analyzed for viability in selective breeding, researchers' optimism toward the hidden potential of wild tea varietals is grounded in precedent. Tea history holds several well-known examples of hybridization experiments using wild assamica varieties that yielded new tea cultivars that later proved highly successful, such as Taiwan's Tai Cha 18, popularly known as Red Jade, and Tai Cha 25. Over the past century, assamica cultivars have played major roles in developing tea industries around the world, and one of the early foundations of tea plantations in south- ern Vietnam began with research into wild assamica varieties growing in the Annamite Range in Laos. Tea made from wild trees possesses a rich array of bioactivities, includ- ing antioxidant, antitumor, antimutagenic, antidiabetic, and lipid-lowering properties. Wild Tea Trees Could Be the Key to Tea Conservation The rich genetic diversity of wild tea trees growing in northern Vietnam could help producers breed stronger, more resistant tea varieties. Photo credit: Seth Griffin By Seth Griffin

• Cover