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Journal of Tea Science ›› 2022, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (6): 779-790.doi: 10.13305/j.cnki.jts.2022.06.009

• Research Paper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Ultrastructure and Molecular Mechanism of Albino Pericarp in Tea Plants

TANG Rongjin1,2, LIU Haoran1,2, LIU Dingding1,2, ZHANG Chenyu1,2, GONG Yang1,2, YE Yuanyuan1,2, CHEN Jiedan1, CHEN Liang1, MA Chunlei1,*   

  1. 1. Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science/Key Laboratory of Biology, Genetics and Breeding of Special Economic Animals and Plants, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Hangzhou 310008, China;
    2. Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Agriculture Science, Beijing 100081, China
  • Received:2022-09-29 Revised:2022-11-10 Online:2022-12-15 Published:2023-01-04

Abstract: Albino pericarp is a rare mutation in tea plants, which has not been reported yet. Recently, among the albino tea mutants preserved in the China National Germplasm Tea Repository, a precious resource ‘Yunbai 1’ with albino pericarp were found. The ultrastructure of the albino pericarp of ‘Yunbai 1’ was compared with the control ‘Zhongcha 129’. The results indicate that compared with the green pericarp of ‘Zhongcha 129’, the plastid structure in albino pericarp cells of ‘Yunbai 1’ was seriously damaged and could not further develop into chloroplasts. Transcriptomic analysis shows that, the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in pericarps of two cultivars were enriched in the pathways of photosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, indicating that the defective chloroplasts in albino pericarp disrupted photosynthetic carbon metabolism and nitrogen metabolism. In addition, numerous DEGs of seeds between two cultivars were enriched in the pathways of carbohydrate metabolism and fatty acid degradation, revealing that the carbon allocation strategy in the seeds of ‘Yunbai 1’ was different from ‘Zhongcha 129’, which might be helpful for maintaining the normal growth and development of seeds. The related results could provide important reference for further study on the albinism of tea fruits.

Key words: tea plant, pericarp, albino, RNA-Seq

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