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Understanding the Origin and Evolution of Tea (Camellia sinensis [L.]): Genomic Advances in Tea

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Abstract

Tea, which is processed by the tender shoots or leaves of tea plant (Camellia sinensis), is one of the most popular nonalcoholic beverages in the world and has numerous health benefits for humans. Along with new progress in biotechnologies, the refined chromosome-scale reference tea genomes have been achieved, which facilitates great promise for the understanding of fundamental genomic architecture and evolution of the tea plants. Here, we summarize recent achievements in genome sequencing in tea plants and review the new progress in origin and evolution of tea plants by population sequencing analysis. Understanding the genomic characterization of tea plants is import to improve tea quality and accelerate breeding in tea plants.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank Chi Zhang and Hongyu Yuan for their input in writing the review. We would also like to thank Lei Wang for his helpful comments in discussion.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32170351), the Science and Technology Project of Henan Province (212102110154) and Nanhu Scholars Program for Young Scholars of XYNU.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Zai-Bao Zhang and Tao Xiong These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, 464000, China

    Zai-Bao Zhang, Tao Xiong, Zi-Wei Zhao & Tian Luo

  2. College of International Education, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, 464000, China

    Jia-Hui Chen, Fan Ye, Jia-Jia Cao & Yu-Rui Chen

Authors
  1. Zai-Bao Zhang
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  2. Tao Xiong
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  3. Jia-Hui Chen
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  4. Fan Ye
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  5. Jia-Jia Cao
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  6. Yu-Rui Chen
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  7. Zi-Wei Zhao
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  8. Tian Luo
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Contributions

ZBZ constructed the manuscript. ZBZ, TX and JHC wrote the manuscript. ZWZ, JJC, YRC, FY and TL participated in figure preparation and manuscript revision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zai-Bao Zhang.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Handling editor: Joana Projecto-Garcia.

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Zhang, ZB., Xiong, T., Chen, JH. et al. Understanding the Origin and Evolution of Tea (Camellia sinensis [L.]): Genomic Advances in Tea. J Mol Evol 91, 156–168 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-023-10099-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-023-10099-z

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