Commercialized non-Camellia tea: traditional function and molecular identification

ABSTRACT

Non-Camellia tea is a part of the colorful Chinese tea culture, and is also widely used as beverage and medicine in folk for disease prevention and treatment. In this study, 37 samples were collected, including 33 kinds of non-Camellia teas and 4 kinds of teas (Camellia). Traditional functions of non-Camellia teas were investigated. Furthermore, non-Camellia teas of original plants were characterized and identified by molecular methods. Four candidate regions (rbcL, matK, ITS2, psbA-trnH) were amplified by polymerase chain reaction. In addition, DNA barcodes were used for the first time to discriminate the commercial non-Camellia tea and their adulterants, and to evaluate their safety. This study showed that BLASTN and the relevant phylogenetic tree are efficient tools for identification of the commercial non-Camellia tea and their adulterants. However, some sequences from original plants have not been found and there is a limitation of sequence number of original plants in GenBank. Submitting more original plant sequences to the GenBank will be helpful for evaluating the safety of non-Camellia teas.