China has made important breakthroughs in the whole genome assembly of tea plants and research on the origin and evolution of tea plants. The research results will provide rich material for tea plant genomics and breeding research, as well as tea plant genetic and evolution research.
Wang Xinchao, a researcher at the Tea Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, introduced that the study included 139 representative samples from China, Japan, Laos, Sri Lanka, Kenya and other countries and regions. The deep resequencing of the tea tree material genome has become the most representative study in this field so far. “The study depicts the evolutionary history of cultivated tea trees and is an important achievement in proving that ‘tea trees originated in China’.”
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Wang Xinchao said that the study also found that the influence of tea quality Key factors, such as the intensity of selection for terpene-metabolizing genes that control tea aroma during the long-term domestication process, were greater on medium and small-leaf species (mainly processing green and oolong tea) than on large-leaf species (mainly processing black tea), resulting in The aroma of tea leaves of the medium and small-leaf species is richer than that of the large-leaf species. In the future, this achievement may effectively help the breeding of tea varieties.
“We can control the expression intensity of different tea aroma genes such as orchid fragrance and chestnut fragrance by crossing different tea varieties, so as to achieve targeted variety selection. For consumers, it will be more conducive to meeting their increasingly diversified needs, and for the tea industry, it will also help tea companies to further enrich their products and avoid industry homogeneous competition.” Wang Xinchao said.
It is worth mentioning that the researchers also discovered the “mystery” of “Longjing 43”, an excellent variety from the West Lake Longjing population. According to reports, “Longjing 43” ranks in the forefront of the main green tea producing areas in China with its excellent economic traits such as early germination, excellent quality, and strong stress resistance (disease and insect resistance, cold resistance, drought resistance, etc.). The research results explain the molecular nature of “Longjing 43” with high quality and resistance to stress from a genetic point of view.
The research was led by the Tea Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Shenzhen Institute of Agricultural Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in cooperation with the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Tea Research Institute of the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and was supported by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Funded by the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Project, the Agricultural Genome Collaborative Innovation Project, the Zhejiang Provincial Major Science and Technology Project for the Breeding of New Tea Varieties, the Shenzhen Basic Research Discipline Layout Project, the National Youth Top Talent Support Program, and the Yunnan Provincial Innovation Research Team.
Source: China News Web