Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Breeding Strategies in Tea Plants

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Biotic and Abiotic Stress".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2025 | Viewed by 378

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
College of Tea Science and Tea Culture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Interests: germplasm resources; flavonoids biosynthesis; transcriptional regulation

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Tea Science and Tea Culture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Interests: germplasm resources; resistance breeding; transcriptional regulation; anthracnose

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, China
Interests: germplasm resources; linkage analysis; quantitative trait loci; GWAS
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is a globally important economic crop, known for the tea processed from its leaves. While cultivated worldwide, its yield per unit area and quality vary substantially across regions due to differences in cultivars, growing environments, and cultivation practices. These variations underscore the critical need for the breeding of excellent cultivars and the refinement of cultivation/management techniques to enhance both productivity and tea quality.

This Special Issue titled “Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Breeding Strategies in Tea Plants” aims to highlight innovative studies, approaches, and techniques that advance our understanding of tea plant genetics, physiology, and biochemistry. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: genetic breeding and germplasm innovation in tea plants, functional genomics and gene discovery, molecular mechanisms underlying environmental stress responses and tolerance, secondary metabolite biosynthesis mechanisms, and efficient tea plant cultivation techniques.

Dr. Chunfang Li
Prof. Dr. Yuchuan Wang
Dr. Jianqiang Ma
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • tea plant
  • cultivation
  • breeding
  • secondary metabolism
  • abiotic stresses

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 6067 KiB  
Article
Joint Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analysis of Molecular Physiological Mechanisms of Tea Tree Roots in Response to pH Regulation
by Qi Zhang, Mingzhe Li, Miao Jia, Zewei Zhou, Yulin Wang, Yankun Liao, Xiaoli Jia, Tingting Wang, Haibin Wang and Jianghua Ye
Horticulturae 2025, 11(7), 821; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae11070821 - 10 Jul 2025
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Abstract
The tea tree root system is an important tissue for nutrient uptake, accumulation, and transport, and pH is an important environmental factor regulating the growth of tea tree (Camellia sinensis). However, the physiological and molecular mechanisms of how the tea tree [...] Read more.
The tea tree root system is an important tissue for nutrient uptake, accumulation, and transport, and pH is an important environmental factor regulating the growth of tea tree (Camellia sinensis). However, the physiological and molecular mechanisms of how the tea tree root system responds to pH are unclear. In this study, Tieguanyin tea tree was used as the research object, and treated with different pH values to determine the morphological indexes of the tea plant root system and systematically study the physiological and molecular mechanisms of the effect of pH on the growth of the tea plant root system using transcriptomics in combination with metabolomics. The results showed that total root length, root surface area, root volume, total root tips, root fork number, and root crossing number of root crosses of the tea plant root system increased significantly (p < 0.05) with increasing pH. Transcriptome analysis showed that a total of 2654 characteristic genes were obtained in response to pH regulation in the root system of the tea plant, which were mainly enriched in six metabolic pathways. Metabolomics analysis showed that the metabolites with the highest contribution in differentiating tea plant responses to different pH regulations were mainly heterocyclic compounds, amino acids and derivatives, alkaloids, and flavonoids. Interaction network analysis showed that pH positively regulated the metabolic intensity of the MAPK signaling pathway (plant, plant hormone signal transduction, and RNA degradation pathway), positively regulated the content of the heterocyclic compound, amino acids and derivatives, and alkaloids, and positively regulated tea plant root growth. However, it negatively regulated ribosome, protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway intensity, and negatively regulated the flavonoid content. This study reveals the physiological and molecular mechanisms of the tea plant root system in response to pH changes and provides an important theoretical basis for the cultivation and management of tea plants in acidified tea plantations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Breeding Strategies in Tea Plants)
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