Abstract: ‘Wanghaicha 1’ is a newly bred green tea cultivar origining from the local population in Ninghai county. To establish an efficient breeding system, a comparative cutting experiment of long and short branch cuttings in lightweight non-woven seedling bags, and a short branch field mulching cutting experiment were set up at the Shengzhou base. The results show that the rooting rate of short branch cuttings of this cultivar was higher than that of the control ‘Longjing 43’, with better growth and greater tolerance to high temperatures and drought. Moreover, the long branch cuttings can reach the nursery standard after 77 days. The method of short branch cuttings covered with black non-woven fabric film on the seedbed can effectively reduce the frequency of manual weeding. And through Illumina HiSeq platform, transcriptome sequencing of the root system of ‘Wanghaicha1’ was performed. Compared with the control ‘Longjing 43’, 107 differentially expressed genes related to plant hormones were screened. It is speculated that the synergistic regulation of these genes may be the molecular basis for the developed root system of this culitvar. This study preliminarily obtained 107 differentially expressed genes related to plant hormones in the adventitious roots of ‘Wanghaicha1’. The established cutting mode of ‘early emergence of long branch from the nursery application of black plastic film to improve quality and efficiency’ can shorten the seedling period by 15.4% and reduce weed control costs by 85.7%, providing theoretical basis and technical support for the industrial promotion of new cultivar.

Key words: new tea cultivar, breeding, cutting techniques, adventitious root, transcriptome