Abstract
BackgroundTea (Camellia sinensis) is an important economic crop in Taiwan. Particularly, two major commercial types of tea (Paochong tea and Oolong tea) which are produced in Taiwan are famous around the world, and they must be manufactured with specific cultivars. Nevertheless, many elite cultivars have been illegally introduced to foreign countries. Because of the lower cost, large amount of “Taiwan-type tea” are produced and imported to Taiwan, causing a dramatic damage in the tea industry. It is very urgent to develop the stable, fast and reliable DNA markers for fingerprinting tea cultivars in Taiwan and protecting intellectual property rights for breeders. Furthermore, genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship evaluations of tea germplasm in Taiwan are imperative for parental selection in the cross-breeding program and avoidance of genetic vulnerability.ResultsTwo STS and 37 CAPS markers derived from cytoplasmic genome and ESTs of tea have been developed in this study providing a useful tool for distinguishing all investigated germplasm. For identifying 12 prevailing tea cultivars in Taiwan, five core markers, including each one of mitochondria and chloroplast, and three nuclear markers, were developed. Based on principal coordinate analysis and cluster analysis, 55 tea germplasm in Taiwan were divided into three groups: sinensis type (C. sinensis var. sinensis), assamica type (C. sinensis var. assamica) and Taiwan wild species (C. formosensis). The result of genetic diversity analysis revealed that both sinensis (0.44) and assamica (0.41) types had higher genetic diversity than wild species (0.25). The close genetic distance between the first (Chin-Shin-Oolong) and the third (Shy-Jih-Chuen) prevailing cultivars was found, and many recently released varieties are the descents of Chin-Shin-Oolong. This implies the potential risk of genetic vulnerability for tea cultivation in Taiwan.ConclusionsWe have successfully developed a tool for tea germplasm discrimination and genetic diversity analysis, as well as a set of core markers for effective identification of prevailing cultivars in Taiwan. According to the results of phylogenetic analysis on prevailing tea cultivars, it is necessary to broaden genetic diversity from wild species or plant introduction in future breeding programs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1999-3110-55-12) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Tea (Camellia sinensis) is an important economic crop in Taiwan
Polymorphism of Sequence tagged site (STS) and Cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) markers The STS and CAPS markers in this study were derived from cytoplasmic genome and nuclear Expressed sequence tag (EST)
A total of 54 nuclear EST primer pairs, including four pairs from the previous study (Kaundun and Matsumoto 2003, 2004) and 50 pairs designed from public EST database of NCBI, as well as 27 primer pairs which amplified the expected size of amplicons
Summary
Tea (Camellia sinensis) is an important economic crop in Taiwan. Two major commercial types of tea (Paochong tea and Oolong tea) which are produced in Taiwan are famous around the world, and they must be manufactured with specific cultivars. Tea (Camellia sinensis) is one of the most important beverage crops around the world and a significant economic crop in Taiwan. Because different types of tea are produced with specific cultivars, numerous tea cultivars are grown in Taiwan. Paochong tea and Oolong tea are two major types of tea currently produced in Taiwan, whereas black and green tea are considered to be minor types. Whereas cultivar Chin-Shin-Gantzy is fitting for green tea, and TTES-8 and TTES-18 are suitable for black tea (Tsai et al 2004b). There are many other germplasm including landraces, introduced varieties, and wild species that could be selected or utilized for breeding new varieties
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