Genetic Diversity of Ancient Camellia sinensis (L.) O.Kuntze in Sandu County of Guizhou Province in China

• Published in: Diversity (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 6; p. 276
• Main Authors: Zhao, Yichen, Wang, Runying, Liu, Qing, Dong, Xuan, Zhao, De-Gang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-06-2021
• Subjects: Alcoholic beverages; ancient tea plant; Annealing; Capillary electrophoresis; Cluster analysis; Cultural heritage; Genetic diversity; Genetics; Germplasm; Morphology; Natural disturbance; phenotypic characters; Plant breeding; Plant diversity; Plant species; Population genetics; Populations; Principal components analysis; Research methodology; Software; SSR markers; Tea; Trees; Variance analysis; China
• ISSN: 1424-2818; 1424-2818
• DOI: 10.3390/d13060276

The ancient tea plant germplasm is an important resource for breeding new tea plant varieties and has great economic value. However, due to man-made and natural disturbances, it has become endangered. In order to have a better management of the conserved tea plant germplasm, it is a requirement to understand the genetic and phenotypic diversity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the genetic and phenotypic diversity of 145 ancient tea plant germplasm resources from five populations in Sandu County of Guizhou province in China. To explore the population genetics of tea plant, we successfully identified 15 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, which were highly polymorphic. Additionally, we applied traditional phenotypic methods to evaluate the tea plant diversity. The results suggested that the genetic and phenotypic diversity were relatively high. A total of 96 alleles were identified, and the mean polymorphic information content (PIC) value was found to be 0.66. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that genetic variation within the populations was greater than among the populations. Overall, our results are the valuable baseline data in developing more efficient management and breeding plans for one of the most popular non-alcoholic beverage crops, the tea plant species.