^|^lsquo;Sunrouge^|^rsquo;, a New Tea Cultivar with High Anthocyanin

Abstract

Sunrouge’ is an anthocyanin-rich tea cultivar, which was selected from the population derived from the natural crossing of ‘Cha Chuukanbohon Nou 6’ (C. taliensis X C. sinensis). The anthocyanin content of ‘Sunrouge’ exceeded that of ‘Cha Chuukanbohon Nou 6’, which was bred as an anthocyaninrich tea parental line. However the anthocyanin content of ‘Cha Chuukanbohon Nou 6’ depends on the plucking period, growth stage and the part of the new shoot. The emergence of the ‘Sunrouge’ crop is moderately early, as with the Japanese leading cultivar ‘Yabukita’ (C.sinensis var. sinensis). The ‘Sunrouge’ tree is of the medium type and has many branches in comparison to typical cultivars. In terms of resistance, it is slightly resistant to anthracnose (Discula theae-sinensis (I. Miyake) Moriwaki & Toy. Sato comb. nov.), highly resistant to gray blight (Pestalotiopsis longiseta (Spegazzini) Dai & Kobayashi) and has relatively low resistance to brown blight (Glomerella cingulata (Stoneman) Spaulding & Schrenk). The survival rate of ‘Sunrouge’ is lower than ‘Yabukita’ and the other control cultivars in the cutting propagation. We try to propagate using the photoautotrophic culture method and the propagation of ‘Sunrouge’ was incident-free. We anticipate its use as a functional food and the material of the natural pigment. Discipline: Plant breeding Additional key words: camellia sinensis, camellia taliensis, cha chuukanbohon nou 6 This paper reports the results obtained in the joint project on “the Programme for Promotion of Basic and Applied Researches for Innovations in Bio-oriented Industry” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan. *Corresponding author: e-mail nesuco@affrc.go.jp Received 31 October 2011; accepted 6 February 2012.