Effects of Edible Fungus Residues Cultivated with Tea Branches and Leaveson Tea Yield and Biochemical Components

Waste from shiitake cultivated on substratecontaining trigs and leaves form tea bushes was used to replace chemicalfertilizers at a tea plantation for this study. Nitrogen (N) replacements forthe experimentation were designed to be 100, 80, 60, 40, 20, and 0%. The yieldof the plants and biochemical composition of the leaves from the tea bushesgrown under various fertilization treatments for 3 years were determined. Theresulting output on fresh tea leaves on the plants decreased as the percentageof the mushroom waste to replace N fertilizer for fertilization increased. Theyield of 6196.80 kg?hm^-2 under treatment1 replacement reduced 10.41% of that of CK. For the other replacements, thereductions on leaf yield ranged from as low as 0.48% to the highest at 10.41%.Significantly different from the other treatments (P <0.05),treatment 3 produced the maximum catechin quality index of 621.98 in the leavesof the fertilized tea plants. Similar among treatments, the catechin astringentindex of the tea increased, ranging from 2.67% to 12.63%, with increasing Nreplacement rate (P> 0.05). The mass fraction of ester catechins intea rose with the increased replacement to 4.27%, which was 10.62% higher thanthat of treatment 6, but no significant differences among the treatments (P>0.05). The changes on 7 biochemical indicators including water extract, teapolyphenols, theobromine, catechins, and amino acids in the tea leaves variedby the treatments. It indicated that the substitution of N with the mushroomwaste did not yet show a consistent long-term effect on the plant metabolism inthe duration of the experiment.