Study on Biological Characteristics and Genetic Relationships of Tea Genetic Resources in Central Vietnam

Background: Tea is an important industrial crop in the world, the drinking is good for human health. The objective of this study is to better understand the biological characteristics and genetic relationships of tea genetic resources collected in the Central Vietnam. Methods: Ninety-seven tea accessions were studied by analyzing morphological traits and molecular markers. The morphological characters observed according to the Descriptions for tea of International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. Ten primers were used for molecular analysis. The output profile after scoring was used calculate the index reflecting the genetic diversity and relationships among tea accessions such as the number of effective alleles, polymorphic information content and genetic distance. Result: This study showed that our materials were morphologically diverse in terms of plant type, branches density, leaves and flowers. The RAPD molecular markers (BIO-08-1300 and OPAX-07-750) were effective in assessing genetic diversity with PIC values of 1.990 and 1.953, respectively. The dendrogram tree separated into four clusters. The genetic distance indicated that the tea populations from five provinces of central region (Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue) were closely related. They were moderately related to the southern central coast tea population but were distantly related to the North group.