Identification of japanese green tea cultivars using dna fragment polymorphisms

Abstract

Nucleotide sequences of a fragment of PCR product amplified by the forward pair (5'-tgcgtacgcgatatgacga-3') and reverse primer (5'-tgatttctcacaggtctcac-3') was determined to distinguish genetic differences within Camellia sinensis. Different nucleotide sequences of retroposon-like sequence DNA (RLS-DNA) were detected in C. sinensis, from which the identification of tea leaves from among 40 Japanese tea cultivars was possible. Commercial teas, including ten Japanese teas, six Chinese teas, three Taiwanese teas, three Myanmar teas, and two Vietnamese teas, were also used for comparison examination as different types of green teas. Nucleotide sequence comparison analysis of RLS-DNA was able to identify tea cultivars according to the nucleotide sequence polymorphisms. This included speciic cultivars, such as Okumidori and Benifuki, which were identiied from green tea material. It was suggested that a 491 bp fragment of RLS-DNA was the target DNA marker for speciic cultivars. Nucleotide sequence polymorphisms of RLS-DNA may be used as a powerful tool to discriminate processed materials.