Baofu Huang , Xiaocheng Wang

Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Center, Cuixi Academy of Biotechnology, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
Journal of Tea Science Research, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2025.15.0001
Received: 02 Dec., 2024    Accepted: 05 Jan., 2025    Published: 18 Jan., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Huang B.F., and Wang X.C., 2025, Functional genomics in tea: pathways and mechanisms underlying key traits, Journal of Tea Science Research, 15(1): 1-11 (doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2025.15.0001)

Recent years, the research on functional genomics of tea trees has accelerated, with the release of high-quality genomes, pan genomes, and the maturity of multi omics technologies being key driving forces behind it. Many key traits, such as the synthesis of flavor compounds (catechins, theanine, terpenes, etc.) and stress resistance (cold resistance, drought resistance), their corresponding core genes, regulatory pathways, and even hidden structural variations, are being gradually uncovered. This study mainly focuses on several typical methods, including transcriptome analysis, gene silencing, metabolome integration, QTL mapping, GWAS to explore their practical applications in functional gene analysis. By combining representative varieties such as Longjing 43 and Zikui, the association pathways between gene expression, copy number variation, and specific phenotypes were further demonstrated. This study not only explains the mechanism of trait formation, but provides support for molecular breeding and quality improvement of tea trees.

Tea tree; Functional genomics; Multi omics integration; Molecular breeding; Quality traits; Anti stress mechanism