Tea Tree and Flavors: New Study!

Tea tree

Did you know that black tea, green tea, Oolong tea, white tea and chai come from the leaves of the evergreen shrub Camellia sinesis or more commonly known as tea tree. A new study done with tea tree indicates that its genome contains clues as to how this shrub produces a wide variety of flavors.

Science Daily shared a concise article about this study. I have brought the main points to this blog post.

The genus Camellia contains over 100 species — including several popular decorative garden plants and C. oleifera, which produces “tea tree” oil — but only two major varieties (C. sinensis.var. assamica and C. sinensis var. sinensis) are grown commercially for making tea. “There are many diverse flavors, but the mystery is what determines or what is the genetic basis of tea flavors?” says plant geneticist Lizhi Gao of Kunming Institute of Botany in China.

Previous studies have suggested that tea owes much of its flavor to a group of antioxidants called flavonoids, molecules that are thought to help plants survive in their environments. One, a bitter-tasting flavonoid called catechin, is particularly associated with tea flavor. Levels of catechin and other flavonoids vary among Camelliaspecies, as does caffeine. Gao and his colleagues found that C. sinensis leaves not only contain high levels of catechins, caffeine, and flavonoids, but also have multiple copies of the genes that produce caffeine and flavonoids.

And still, there is more work to do, both in terms of double-checking the genome draft and in terms of sequencing different tea tree varieties from around the world.

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