Biotechnological Approaches for Tea Improvement

Tea, Theaceae family, is the second most consumed and oldest beverage in the world. Tea is also an important source of earning revenue by tea growing countries. The present chapter will focus on recent updates of some biotechnological techniques, like tissue culture, genetic transformation, molecular markers, and functional genomics for tea improvement. Many media composition, explants, and plant growth regulators have been reported for tea micropropagation. Transgenic technology can play a big role in modern tea breeding program. Molecular markers can play a significant role in selecting and conserving good planting material. Functional genomic studies can help in the development of association mapping, gene introgression study, linkage map constructions, allele-mining, DNA sequence-based conservation and finally the utilization of tea genetic resources for tea improvement.