How do Leaf Hoppers help some time

For most crops, insect damage is a bad thing—both for yield and quality.  With tea, however, we have this somewhat unique case of the so-called “bug-bitten” teas where attack by an insect actually improves the quality compared to an un-attacked plant by inducing chemical changes that are said to improve the aroma of the finished tea.  Famous examples of this are Oriental Beauty (东方美人, dong fang mei ren), Concubine Wulong (贵妃, gui fei), and Honey-Aroma (蜜香, mi xiang) black teas.  All three of these teas are originally Taiwanese, so is there something special about Taiwan?  Well, when you dive into the scientific literature on leafhoppers on tea plants, most of the studies done in Taiwan are on a species of leafhopper known as Jacobiasca formosana, while most of the studies in mainland China talk about a leafhopper known as Empoasca vitis.  So it seems safe to assume that maybe one of these insects causes “good” chemical changes in the tea leaves that increase the quality and the other species causes “bad” chemical changes that decrease quality, right?  Well, according to a few recent studies, it turns out there is very strong evidence that they’re all the same species (Empoasca onukii), so the leafhopper responsible for Oriental Beauty is actually quite widespread!

 http://www.teageek.net/blog/2016/02/bug-bitten-teas-why-are-leafhoppers-only-sometimes-a-good-thing/

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