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Selection and breeding of tea

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Tea

Abstract

The history of plant breeding in tea is as chequered and as old as the discovery of wild tea in Assam and elsewhere. From the very early days of tea growing, it was recognized that breeding of tea creates problems that are somewhat unique to the plant. This is so because, firstly, unlike other woody perennials, in tea only a part of the total biomass constitutes the harvest, and secondly the plant is highly heterogeneous and self-incompatible. The ease with which cut-off branches of tea sprouted when they were buried in the soil was, however, noted (Watt, 1907). It was also noted that tea sets better with pollen from another bush, the average set of the plant with its own pollen being about one quarter of that obtained by cross pollination (Wight and Barua, 1939). This apart, selfing results in smaller seeds with reduced germinability or no seeds at all (Mamedov, 1961; Sebastiampillai, 1963). Consequently, the earlier breeding strategy relied on artificial pollination between plants different in some morphological features as a means for producing superior planting materials.

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  1. B. Banerjee
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, University of Liverpool, UK

    K. C. Willson (Consultant in Tropical Agriculture) (Consultant in Tropical Agriculture)

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Surrey, UK

    M. N. Clifford (Leader, Food Safety Research Group) (Leader, Food Safety Research Group)

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Banerjee, B. (1992). Selection and breeding of tea. In: Willson, K.C., Clifford, M.N. (eds) Tea. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2326-6_3

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