The Tea Plant Genome

This edited volume is focused on genomic study of tea crop. This book includes 20 chapters that cover the most relevant and hot topics in tea plant genetics and genomics. A first set of chapters includes its global economic and healthy importance, the botany and taxonomy, main quality and functional components. A second group of chapters deals with genetics, breeding and includes genetic resources, commercial breeding, genetic transformation techniques, as well as the use of marker assisted selection (QTL, GWAS). This will be followed by a set of chapters on omics, including the genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, organelle genome, small RNA and DNA methylation. Two chapters are devoted to biotic and abiotic stresses, continued by two others more chapters focused on the SNP array, and databases for molecular design breeding. Finally, a chapter deals with future perspectives in the omics era for tea breeding.

The tea plant is a cross-pollinated, self-incompatible, high heterozygosity, very large genome (-3.2 Gb) which have greatly hindered research and breeding in this crop. In the recent years, modern genetic and genomic tools have contributed to the development of significant valuable resources for the tea genetic improvement.

This book is of interest to teachers, tea researchers, tea breeders and tea lovers. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, forestry, horticulture, beverage plant sciences.

Dr. Liang Chen is a world-renowned professor in the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TRICAAS) located at Hangzhou, China. He has extensive research experience in tea germplasm, genetics, breeding and genomics, etc. Liang received PhD on Tea Science from Zhejiang University, China and had postdoctoral research from Cornell University, USA. He visited Ehime University in Japan, University of Florence in Italy and Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands as senior visiting professor, respectively. Dr. Liang Chen has been appointed three times as Honorary Scientist and Advisor of the Rural Development Administration of the Republic of Korea. He has been the curator of the world's largest collection of tea genetic resources, National Tea Germplasm Repository at Hangzhou for 20 years and bred 3 dozens of national released and Plant Variety Protection covered tea cultivars for the tea industry.

Dr. Jie-Dan Chen is an associate professor on tea genomics, genetics, and databases in the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TRICAAS) located at Hangzhou, China. He has constructed a comprehensive database of genomic variations for molecular breeding in tea plants (TeaGVD).