Soil and fine root-associated microbial communities are niche dependent and influenced by copper fungicide treatment during tea plant cultivation

Dear Editor,Fungicide treatment has a profound effect on controlling plant pathogens in modern agriculture,however,it also carries the risk of undesirable outcomes.For decades,scientists have been concerned about the harmful impacts of heavy metals like copper(Cu)on crop performance and soil microorganisms.Use of various copper fungicides,like Bordeaux mixture,have been a component of conventional agricultural practices to control fungal and bacterial pathogens,especially in vineyards,tea gardens,or fruit tree orchards[9,10].This treatment increases the accumulation of high levels of Cu in surface soils,and despite the critical role of Cu as an essential trace element in wide biological and metabolic processes,it becomes toxic to plants when applied at high levels[4].The regular application of copper fungicides has also been linked to affecting microbial communities at the levels of diversity[8],population structure[2],abundance,and growth[1,3].Understanding the undesired effects of fungicides on microorganisms’beneficial activities is therefore important for evaluating the hazards associated with the fungicide used in agriculture.Yet,the effects of copper fungicide on full microbial communities remains relatively understudied,especially in tea plants.Thus,we herein explored the inf luence of Bordeaux mixture under different management regimes(raking or without raking leaf litter)on microbial communities of root,bulk soil,and rhizosphere compartments of tea plants planted in a ten-year-old tea garden.We provided insights into the ecological consequences of tea management practices that might help to identify specific fungicide treatment regimens,environmental characteristics,and microbial community members to minimize the negative environmental outcomes and optimize the positive anti-pathogen aspects of fungicide treatment.

Characterization of CsWRKY29 and CsWRKY37 transcription factors and their functional roles in cold tolerance of tea plant

The WRKY gene family is most widely known as being the key plant transcription factor family involved in various stress responses and affecting plant growth and development.In this study,a total of 86 members of the CsWRKY genes were identified from the tea plant genome.Most of these genes contain several important Cis-regulatory elements in the promoter regions associated with multiple stress-responses.These genes were further classified into three groups,I,II,and III,each with 21,58,and 7 members,respectively.We showed evidence that tandem duplications,but not the whole genome duplication,are likely to drive the amplification of CsWRKY genes in tea plants.All the 86 CsWRKY genes showed differential expression patterns either in different tissues,or under exposure to diverse abiotic stresses such as drought,cold acclimation,and MeJA treatments.Additionally,the functional roles of two genes,CsWRKY29 and CsWRKY37,were examined under cold stress;and the silencing of these genes resulted in tea plant phenotypes susceptible to cold stress.Moreover,transgenic Arabidopsis lines overexpressing CsWRKY29 and CsWRKY37 genes showed higher survival rates and lower malondialdehyde levels under freezing treatment than the wild type plants.The core findings from this work provide valuable evolutionary pattern of WRKY gene family and underpinning the underlying regulatory roles of CsWRKY29 and CsWRKY37 from tea plants that conferred cold tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis plants.

The Reference Genome of Tea Plant and Resequencing of 81 Diverse Accessions Provide Insights into Its Genome Evolution and Adaptation

Tea plant is an important economic crop,which is used to produce the world's oldest and most widely consumed tea beverages.Here,we present a high-quality reference genome assembly of the tea plant(Camellia sinensis var.sinensis)consisting of 15 pseudo-chromosomes.LTR retrotransposons(LTR-RTs)account for 70.38%of the genome,and we present evidence that LTR-RTS play critical roles in genome size expansion and the transcriptional diversification of tea plant genes through preferential insertion in promoter regions and introns.Genes,particularly those coding for terpene biosynthesis pro-teins,associated with tea aroma and stress resistance were significantly amplified through recent tandem duplications and exist as gene clusters in tea plant genome.Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences of 81 tea plant accessions with diverse origins revealed three well-differentiated tea plant populations,support-ing the proposition for the southwest origin of the Chinese cultivated tea plant and its later spread to western Asia through introduction.Domestication and modern breeding left significant signatures on hundreds of genes in the tea plant genome,particularly those associated with tea quality and stress resis-tance.The genomic sequences of the reported reference and resequenced tea plant accessions provide valuable resources for future functional genomics study and molecular breeding of improved cul-tivars of tea plants.