Abstract
Tea has long been a well-known crop for its economic value and widening the genetic variability of tea family is often necessitated. Hybridization programs at intraspecific level have been greatly fascinated as potential and useful methods in tea plant breeding to widening the genetic diversity. This comparative study was intended to explore a new avenue to develop the tea plant breeding programs through evaluating remote intraspecific cross-compatibility between Camellia sinensis var. sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze and C. sinensis var. assamica (Masters). Remote intraspecific cross-compatibility was assessed by comparing and contrasting the in-vivo pollen germination and pollen tube growth using fluorescence microscopy and the subsequent fruit set following controlled self- and cross-pollinations. In-vivo pollen germination and pollen tube growth was examined at 1 day, 3 days, and 14 days after pollination treatments, but disparity was not observed in pollen germination and pollen tube growth between self- and cross-pollinations. Early fruit set was evaluated at 3 months and 6 months after pollination. Fruit set was observed in cross-pollination except self-pollination. A late-acting self-incompatibility system or post-zygotic barriers and close intraspecific cross-compatibility were confirmed within C. sinensis var. sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze. Potential remote intraspecific cross-compatibility was recorded from cultivars crossed between China type and Assam type tea. The present findings bestow the significant contribution to develop the future tea breeding programs. Key words: Intraspecific cross, pollen germination, pollen quality, pollination, tea breeding.
Highlights
Tea has been devoted as the most versatile non-alcoholic beverage in the world
Pollen viability determined by FDA test was 82.2% for C. sinensis var. sinensis „Yabukita‟ and 81.3% for C. sinensis var. assamica „AI-37‟
The highest in-vitro pollen germination was obtained for C. sinensis var. assamica „AI-37‟ (81.05%) and it was significantly low in C. sinensis var. sinensis „Yabukita‟ (69.43%)
Summary
Tea has been devoted as the most versatile non-alcoholic beverage in the world This perennial crop is commercially cultivated for its tender leaves and has been playing an important role in the world economy. Kuntze or China type, Camellia sinensis var. Assamica (Masters) or Assam type, and C. sinensis var. The classification of the genus Camellia was initially put forwarded by Sealy in 1958 following a revision in 1962 by Wight, principally based on leaf morphological characters of tea plant (Banerjee, 1992; Chen et al, 2012; Wachira et al, 2013; Mondal, 2014). Owing to the outbreeding nature of tea plant, the cultivated germplasm consists of extreme China types to extreme Assam types with the continuous variation between them (Banerjee, 1992; Mondal et al, 2004; Rajkumar et al, 2010; Ariyarathna et al, 2011; Chen et al, 2012; Wachira et al, 2013; Mondal, 2014)
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