A review on the application of computer vision and machine learning in the tea industry

Tea is rich in polyphenols, vitamins, and protein, which is good for health and tastes great. As a result, tea is very popular and has become the second most popular beverage in the world after water. For this reason, it is essential to improve the yield and quality of tea. In this paper, we review the application of computer vision and machine learning in the tea industry in the last decade, covering three crucial stages: cultivation, harvesting, and processing of tea. We found that many advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and sensor technologies have been used in tea, resulting in some vision-based tea harvesting equipment and disease detection methods. However, these applications focus on the identification of tea buds, the detection of several common diseases, and the classification of tea products. Clearly, the current applications have limitations and are insufficient for the intelligent and sustainable development of the tea field. The current fruitful developments in technologies related to UAVs, vision navigation, soft robotics, and sensors have the potential to provide new opportunities for vision-based tea harvesting machines, intelligent tea garden management, and multimodal-based tea processing monitoring. Therefore, research and development combining computer vision and machine learning is undoubtedly a future trend in the tea industry.