VICTORIAN green tea growers have wrapped up the biggest harvest on record.
The state's nine growers, who produce 72ha of green tea in the North East, picked 700 tonnes of fresh leaf between spring and autumn.
The growers, all contracted to Japanese company Ito En, have crops in the high-rainfall areas of Mt Beauty, Bright and Alexandra.
The harvested leaf was processed into 168 tonnes of crude tea at Ito En's Wangaratta factory.
Ito En exports the crude tea to Japan where it is processed.
The company's technical manager, Robin Whitford, said this year's harvest was a vast improvement on the frost-affected 2008-09 harvest.
He said growers had been encouraged to move from drip irrigation to overhead sprays to reduce frost damage.
"At the moment our processing capacity is 72ha, but we are not staying static," Mr Whitford said.
"Ito En is selling some product at the factory and into Coles supermarkets, so it is starting to be consumed domestically."
This year, Kiewa Valley grower Greg Cooper raised the production bar for the fledgling industry.
A new $130,000 overhead spray irrigation system protected his crop from frost, resulting in a yield of 19 tonnes/ha across four picks.
The crop is normally harvested across three picks from October to March, with average yields of 18 tonnes/ha.
Mr Cooper and his wife, Gayle, former dairy farmers, planted their first green tea in 2002 at Mt Beauty.
"Last year we averaged 10 tonnes/ha without frost protection," Mr Cooper said. "The irrigation system has solved a heap of problems - fertiliser application can be now timed according to harvest."
