Application of computing techniques in monitoring black tea processing for improved quality: review and future directions

Abstract

Tea (Camellia Sinensis) is among the most popular crops worldwide. The crop has been cultivated for more than 300 years and is a source of various categories of tea which include: green, black, yellow, white Oolong, ilex, among others. Among these categories of tea, black tea is the most popular with an estimated consumption of 78% of the total tea consumptions. The steps of processing black tea are: plucking, withering, cutting, tearing and curling, fer- mentation, drying and sorting and packaging. Monitoring tea processing has been an area of interest to researchers for more than 50 years with proposals be- ing put forward on various ways of professionalizing one or more of the steps of tea processing. Some of the proposals being put forward are in the use of: Machine Vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Electronic Nose and Electronic Tongue, among others. This paper reviews some of the technological proposals to monitor tea processing and proposes future directions