Abstract: To explore the information of genetic variation in albino tea and the feasibility of the mSNP liquid chip in the identification of tea germplasm, we analyzed the genetic diversity and detected the mutation sites of 18 tea resources by genome resequencing. The results indicate that the 18 albino tea accessions could be divided into three groups based on genome-wide SNP markers, and the resources with genetic relationship or close geographical location tended to cluster together. Functional annotation of the resequencing data reveals 17 056 non-synonymous mutated genes in the 18 albino tea resources, of which 98 missense mutations were found in 14 chlorophyll synthesis related genes. Then, based on the genomic variation information obtained in the previous study, we developed a set of liquid chip containing 59 mSNP and 222 SNP sites for the first time, and used the liquid chip to detect the genotype information of 13 tea plants. The results show that the genetic similarity between pairs of the same cultivar was 92%-98%, and the genetic similarity between different cultivar was less than 84%, indicating that the chip could accurately identify 18 albino tea accessions. Our results laid a foundation for the application of mSNP liquid phase chip in the identification of tea germplasm resources and molecular marker-assisted breeding.

Key words: tea plant, mSNP, GBTS, genetic diversity, whole genome resequencing