Study On Genetic Relationship Of 36 Tea (Camellia Sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) Cultivars In Sichuan Using RAPD Markers

Tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) is one of the important enonomic plants in China, which has long planting history and distributes widely. It has been proved that Southwest of China is the origin of tea plant, and has rich of tea germplasms. Currently, two germplasm resources of tea plant had been set up in China where 3300 species were collected. The abundance of germplasm provides rich resources for the application of new tea cultivars. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), a newly developed molecular marker techniques, is a powerful method for bio-diversity research. It has been popularized for its rapidity, simplicity and capacity of revealing the genetic diversity in DNA level.36 tea(Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) cultivars, including those origins in Sichuan and introduced from Fujian, Zhejiang, Guizhou, Hunan, Guangzhou, Anhui and Jiangsu into Sichuan tea areas, as materials. Better methods for DNA extraction and RAPD reaction system were structured. Based on RAPD patterns amplified by random primers, total bands, polymorphic bands , percentage of polymorphic bands (%) and genetic distances were got. DNA molecular dendrogram of 36 tea cultivars were made by UPGMA cluster analysis. Based on unique markers and special band patterns, tea cultivars could be identified. The result as follows:1. The genetic relationships of 36 Sichuan tea cultivars were studied with the RAPD marker. 16 primers selected from 50 random primers were used to amplify a total of 167 DNA bands, among which 158(94. 61%) were polymorphic. The average number of DNA bands amplified by each primer was 10. 4, the most is 15 and the least was 7. Genetic distances between the cultivars varied from 0.149 to 0.697, with an average of 0.412.2. UPGMA cluster analysis of 167 bands amplified by 16 primers was made. The result showed that 36 tea cultivars tested could be classified into 3 complex groups and 2 simple groups. 8 cultivars from Sichuan and Qianmei419 which from Guizhou were classified into group 1; 17 cultivars origins from Zhejiang and Fujian were classified into group 2; others were classified into group 3. Nanjian3 and Qianmei502 were unique.