Abstract
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.
Highlights
The results showed that the phenotypic diversity of the 145 experimental materials of the ancient tea plant germplasm was relatively high, which provided a wide range of parents for breeding new varieties
Fifteen simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to study the genetic diversity of five different populations of ancient tea plant germplasm (Table 4), and the results showed that the studied populations have a relatively high diversity
The values of the variation coefficients and diversity indices in this study were found to be lower than those reported by Niu [49]. This could be because the samples in the previous study were collected from 32 ancient tea plant germplasm resources distributed in Guizhou, whereas this study focused on the phenotypic diversity of the ancient tea plant germplasm in Sandu of Guizhou
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Ancient tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O.Kuntze) germplasm refers to the tea tree that is more than 100 years old [1]. The ancient tea plant germplasm does not require chemical control and additives, but it is rich in nutrients. Tea made from the ancient tea plant germplasm is more popular [2]. It has significant scientific, social, economic, and cultural benefits, and is an important agricultural cultural heritage in the world [3]
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