Abstract
The only tea [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze] cultivation in Italy is located in Lucca (a city in Tuscany region). The major part of the plants of this cultivation derive from the seeds of a common mother plant, still present at the Lucca Botanical Garden, of unknown origin. A specimen imported from Kyoto, Japan, has generated, through cuttings, other plants that form a separate plot. In this study, 66 tea cultivars belonging to the germplasm collection of the China National Germplasm Tea Repository in the TRICAAS located at Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, and 17 accessions from the Italian cultivation were studied by means of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The aim of the study was to determine the genetic relatedness between these accessions, in order to find the possible origin of the Italian tea. In total 83 tea accessions were analysed using 63 SSRs selected from 15 different linkage groups of the tea plant. The results revealed a close correlation between the 16 accessions from seeds and the Chinese tea cultivars belonging to the sinensis variety. In particular, these samples showed a close genetic relationship to the cultivars of the Zhejiang Provinces. The specimen imported from Kyoto, on the other hand, probably belongs to the assamica variety.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AA.VV. (2012) Antiche camelie della Lucchesia. Edited by Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa. Edizioni ETS, Pisa. ISBN 978884673128-9
Carr MKV, Stephens W (1992) Climate, weather and the yield of tea. In: Willson KC, Clifford MN (eds) Tea: cultivation to consumption. Chapman and Hall, London, pp 87–135
Charters YM, Wilkinson MJ (2000) The use of self-pollinated progenies as ‘in-groups’ for the genetic characterization of cocoa germplasm. Theor Appl Genet 100:160–166
Chen L, Yu FL, Tong QQ (2000) Discussions on phylogenetic classification and evolution of Sect. Thea. J Tea Sci 20:89–94 (in Chinese)
Chen J, Wang P, Xia Y, Xu M, Pei S (2005) Genetic diversity and differentiation of Camellia sinensis L. (cultivated tea) and its wild relatives in Yunnan province of China, revealed by morphology, biochemistry and allozyme studies. Genet Resour Crop Evol 52:41–52
De Costa WAJM, Mohotti AJ, Wijeratne MA (2007) Ecophysiology of tea. Braz J Plant Physiol 19:299–332
Desjardins P, Conklin D (2010) NanoDrop microvolume quantitation of nucleic acids. J Vis Exp 45:2565
Doyle JJ and Doyle JL (1987) A rapid DNA isolation procedure for small quantities of fresh leaf tissue. Phytochemical Bulletin No. 19. The Phytochemical Section of the Botanical Society of America, Irvine, pp 11–15
International Tea Committee (ITC) (2016) Annual bulletin of statistics. International Tea Committee, Ltd, London
Jackson JR (1870) Tea. Nature 2:215–217
Liu K, Muse SV (2005) PowerMarker: an integrated analysis environment for genetic marker analysis. Bioinformatics 21:2128–2129
Ma JQ, Yao MZ, Ma CL, Wang XC, Jin JQ, Wang XM, Chen L (2014) Construction of a SSR-based genetic map and identification of QTLs for catechins content in tea plant (Camellia sinensis). PLoS ONE 9(3):e93131
Park YJ, Lee JK, Kim NS (2009) Simple sequence repeat polymorphisms (SSRPs) for evaluation of molecular diversity and germplasm classification of minor crops. Molecules 14:4546–4569
Powell W, Machray GC, Provan J (1996) Polymorphism revealed by simple sequence repeats. Trends Plant Sci 1:215–222
Tamura K, Peterson D, Peterson N, Stecher G, Nei M, Kumar S (2011) Mega 5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood evolutionary distance and maximum parsimony method. Mol Biol Evol 28(10):2731–2739
Tan LQ, Peng M, Xu LY, Wang LY, Chen SX, Zou Y, Qi GN, Cheng H (2015) Fingerprinting 128 Chinese clonal tea cultivars using SSR markers provides new insights into their pedigree relationships. Tree Genet Genomes 11:90
Taniguchi F, Kimura K, Saba T, Ogino A, Yamaguchi S, Tanaka J (2014) Worldwide core collections of tea (Camellia sinensis) based on SSR markers. Tree Genet Genomes 10(1):1555–1565
Varshney RK, Graner A, Sorrells ME (2005) Genetic microsatellite markers in plants: features and applications. Trends Biotechnol 23(1):48–55
Vithyashini L, Ranaweera KK, Ranatunga MAB, Wickremasinghe IP (2013) Genetic fidelity assessment of micropropagated tea plants using morphological and RAPD markers. In: Camellia sinensis L (ed) Proceedings of the undergraduate research, Department of Agricultural Biology, vol 4. University of Peradeniya, pp 49–52
Centro Funzionale Regionale di Monitoraggio Meteo—Idrologico, Regione Toscana. http://www.sir.toscana.it/
Yao MZ, Chen L, Liang YR (2008) Genetic diversity among tea cultivars from China, Japan and Kenya revealed by ISSR markers and its implication for parental selection in tea breeding programmes. Plant Breeding 127:166–172
Yeh FC, Yang RC, Boyle TBJ, Ye ZH, Mao JX (1997) Popgene, the user-friendly freeware for population genetics analysis. Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, pp 20–25
Yu FL (1986) Discussion on the originating place and the originating centre of tea plants. J Tea Sci 6(1):1–8 (in Chinese)
Zhao LP, Liu Z, Chen L, Yao MZ, Wang XC (2008) Generation and characterization of 24 novel EST derived microsatellites from tea plants (Camellia sinensis) and cross species amplification in its closely related species and varieties. Conserv Genet 9:1327–1331
Zhao DW, Yang JB, Yang SX, Kato K, Luo JP (2014) Genetic diversity and domestication origin of tea plant Camellia taliensis (Theaceae) as revealed by microsatellite markers. BMC Plant Biol 14:14
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Guido Cattolica, member of the Italian Society of Camelia and manager of the “Il primo Thè italiano”®, and Angelo Lippi, formerly director of the Lucca Botanical Garden, for their support, availability to share information, knowledge and the Italian tea plant material used for this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ori, F., Ma, JQ., Gori, M. et al. DNA-based diversity of tea plants grown in Italy. Genet Resour Crop Evol 64, 1905–1915 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-016-0480-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-016-0480-2