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ISSR DIVERSITY AND GENETIC DIFFERENTIATION OF ANCIENT TEA (CAMELLIA SINENSIS VAR. ASSAMICA) PLANTATIONS FROM CHINA: IMPLICATIONS FOR PRECIOUS TEA GERMPLASM CONSERVATION

P.Z. JI ^1,2# , H. LI^1#, L.Z. GAO³, J. ZHANG² , Z.Q. CHENG⁴ AND X.Q. HUANG¹*

Abstract: Over 10 centuries, ancient cultivated tea populations (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) are still planted merely in Yunnan province of China. Genetic diversity and differentiation were examined in 10 ancient tea plantations by using ISSR markers. The average genetic diversity within populations, estimated with Nei's genetic diversity (H_E), was approximately 0.2809, while Shannon indices (H_O) was 0.4179. The percentage of polymorphic loci (P) of the 10 populations ranged from 56.5% to 90.91%. We found a moderate level of genetic differentiation among population as evidenced by the coefficients of gene differentiation (Gst) of 0.3911 and the analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) of 39.70%. The result could be explained by the nature of highly out crossing in the tea species as well as serious habitat fragmentation. Finally, conservation strategies were discussed to protect these ancient tea populations, including in situ reserve settings and ex situ germplasm sampling.

¹College of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, P. R. China

²Tea Research Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Menghai, 666201, P.R. China

³Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, P.R. China

⁴Biotechnology and Genetic Germplasm Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Kunming 650223, P. R. China.

*Corresponding author E-mail: xingqih@hotmail.com