Young tea grower Sheng Wenbin of Xinchang: Connecting tradition and market through improved seedling cultivation

Sheng Wenbin, a member of the Youth Working Committee of the China Tea Marketing Association and chairman of the Xinchang County Kenong Tea Tree Professional Cooperative, recently introduced his practice and plans for taking root at the foot of Tianmu Mountain and deeply cultivating improved tea seedling cultivation. As a retired soldier, after returning home in 2011, facing the dilemma of a single tea seedling variety and unsalable sales in the local area, he took the lead in establishing the cooperative in 2012, creating the 'Tianmu Golden Leaf' brand, focusing on improved tea tree selection, digital seedling cultivation, and production and sales assistance.^[1]

Sheng Wenbin stated that he led his team to establish the Tianmu Golden Leaf Jinshan Digital Seedling Garden, using intelligent temperature control, integrated water and fertilizer management, and cloud monitoring to transform traditional nurseries, and through online channels sold improved tea seedlings from Xinchang to 28 provinces across the country. The cooperative also unified seedling standards, improved varieties, and brands, shared seedling cultivation techniques with farmers free of charge, and solved the problems of blind seedling cultivation and following trends leading to unsalable sales.^[1]

For future development, Sheng Wenbin proposed building three bridges: first, connecting traditional germplasm with modern technology, continuing to deepen industry-university-research cooperation, expanding the rare tea tree resource bank, applying for new varieties and seedling patents, and iterating digital technology; second, connecting local production areas with the national market, while deeply cultivating six local townships in Zhejiang to improve common prosperity workshops, continuously sending improved tea seedlings and seedling cultivation techniques to central and western production areas such as Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan; third, connecting industry predecessors with young new farmers, relying on the platform of the Youth Working Committee of the China Tea Marketing Association, opening field classrooms and entrepreneurship training, and cultivating returning youth and retired soldiers to enter the tea industry.^[1]