Selection of core evaluation indices and construction of a comprehensive evaluation method for machine-harvested tea plant cultivars

The selection and breeding of machine-harvested tea cultivars to meet the goal of "machine replacement" is the focus of the current tea industry. However, the adaptability of different tea cultivars to machine harvesting is not clear, and there is no comprehensive evaluation method that can be used. In order to establish a scientific and reasonable comprehensive evaluation system of machine-harvested tea cultivars, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were performed to screen the core evaluation indices, and an analytic hierarchy process and an entropy weight method were applied to calculate the weight value of the core evaluation indices. Moreover, four individual evaluation methods and three combined evaluation methods were applied to comprehensively evaluate the adaptability of machine-harvested tea cultivars. We found that there were great differences in important agronomic characters related to machine-harvested among tea cultivars. 14 core evaluation indices and their weight values of machine-harvested tea cultivars were obtained. The comprehensive evaluation model based on four individual evaluation methods and three combined evaluation methods could scientifically and reasonably evaluate the suitability of tea cultivars for machine harvesting. From the point of view of ease of practicality, simplicity and effectiveness, the optimal individual evaluation method for machine-harvested tea cultivars was the entropy weight method. In addition, three new cultivars suitable for machine-harvesting were selected by screening, namely Gancha 4, Huangjinjv and Yinshun, which could be directly utilized in the construction of machine-harvested tea plantations.