Moisture content is critical in the process of tea hot air drying. Taking green tea as an example, an experiment was performed on the dynamic hot air drying of rolled tea, in order to monitor the dynamic change of moisture content of tea with drying time under different feeding amounts (800-1 200 g), drying temperatures (90-120 ℃) and drum speeds (20-30 r/min). Each significant factor was analyzed to explore the dynamic changes of the water content of tea under different drying conditions. The experimental results show that there were significant effects of temperature, rotational speed, and feeding rate on the drying of tea leaves. The influence was sorted in the descending order of temperature, feeding rate, and rotating speed. Among them, the temperature has posed the greatest influence on drying. In the feeding amount, it was appropriate to cover the drum wall with tea to form a perfect casting curtain. That was because too much feeding amount easily caused uneven heating of tea, and then appeared dry outside and wet inside, even focal point explosion. The decreasing rate of water content in tea leaves showed a trend of first increased and then decreased in the whole drying. As such, the water loss was less at the lower water content, and finally, the water change tended to be gentle. The water content of tea leaves was basically stable at 4%-5% at the end of drying, particularly for convenient transportation and preservation. A prediction experiment was carried out, where the water content of tea drying was taken as the output, while the structure parameters of the dryer, drying temperature, drum speed, drying initial water, and prediction time as the input. BP, Elman, and PARTICLE swarm optimization Elman neural network (PSO Elman) neural network were used to establish the dynamic prediction model of tea moisture content during drying. A comparison was also made on the traditional multiple linear regression fitting model. The results of verification and error analysis of the Linear fit, BP neural network, Elman neural network and PSO-Elman neural network models showed that their determination coefficients were 0.960 9, 0.998 0, 0.998 5, and 0.999 4, respectively. Compared with the traditional linear regression, the neural network was more accurately expressed the linear or nonlinear relationship in the complex system, showing better prediction for the tea drying. In three neural network models, the PSO-Elman model was more accurate than BP and Elman model, indicating better prediction on the change of water content during tea drying. The findings can provide a strong theoretical basis for the hot air drying of tea, therebyguiding tea processing and production for high efficiency and tea quality.