Tea plants placed in China’s important economic crops list. The new fungal infection started with small lesions with reddish brown color edges, and it’s extended little large, numerous visible pycnidia were observed on the mature leaves of ten year old tea plant in Chizhou, Anhui Province, China in September 2018. To isolate the causal agent, the symptomatic leaves were randomly collected from the tea garden and were washed with tap water, followed by distilled water. The margins of infected leaves were cut into small pieces (4-5 mm²) and surface sterilized with 0.1% HgCl 2 for 1 min followed by 70% ethanol for 30 s, rinsed three times in sterile distilled water (Chen et al. 2016). Then, the pieces were blotted dry on sterilized filter paper and placed on 2% water agar, incubated in the dark at 28°C until fungal hyphae started to grow. Single hyphal tips were transferred onto potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates and incubated for 10 days at 28°C for phenotypic observations. Morphology of the colonies was exa...

The tea plant, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze, is a crucial commercial crop in China. In September 2016, a new spot disease was observed on the leaves of a mature (age: 10 years) tea plant in Chizhou, Anhui Province, China. The symptoms began with brown lesions with irregular margins that expanded to 10 mm. Brown to gray color changes in the centers of the mature lesions with dark brown edges were noticed. The disease incidence reached 20% of tea plants in 100 ha of tea fields. The infected parts (junction of diseased and healthy region) were cut into small pieces (5–7 mm2) and subsequently underwent surface sterilization (Chen et al. 2016). Thereafter, the pieces were blotted dry on sterilized filter paper and placed on water agar plates, which were incubated in the dark at 28°C until fungal hyphae started to grow from the pieces. The single-hyphal tip was then transferred onto potato dextrose agar plates for further analysis. After 7 to 10 days, the purified colony produced yellowish green colonies wi...

Oolong tea is famous for its characteristic of durably brewing. To explore suitable brewing cuppages and the scientific methods to brew Oolong tea in multiple steeping process. Dahongpao tea (Zhengyan, Banyan and Zhouyan tea) is well known Oolong tea variety, brewed at 14 times and assessed its chemical composition, infusion colour and sensory quality in different brewing intervals. The results showed that Zhengyan tea (A3) had the best quality of steeping among the chosen tea. It could be brewed up to 10 cuppages with 80% sensory score. The chemical composition and tea infusion colour strength were higher in Zhengyan tea. Though, 70% caffeine leached within first three steeping. The Forest regression model revealed that the suitable brewing time ranges between 4 and 10 in the chosen Dahongpao tea variety. This study provides a scientific method and suitable steeping times for the drinking of different Dahongpao tea through dynamic analysis of quantity of chemical composition, infusion colour strength and sensory quality.

Background Caffeine acts as an antifungal agent; however, its underlying inhibition mechanism remains unclear. To investigate variations in caffeine antifungal activity, this study was evaluate the inhibition mechanisms of caffeine on phytopathogens Botryosphaeria dothidea and Colletotrichum gloeosporioides through transcriptomic analysis, which causes leaf necrosis and anthracnose on tea leaves, respectively.Results Our in vitro results shows that the antifungal activity of caffeine quite different between B. dothidea and C. gloeosporioides. Furthermore, microscopic observation and bioactivity assay results proved that caffeine destroyed the fungal protective layers (cell wall and cell membrane) and subcellular organelles. The transcriptomes of these two fungi exposed to different caffeine concentrations were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing and the results showed that caffeine repressed gene expression involved in the pathways of mRNA surveillance, ribosome biogenesis in eukaryotes, aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, etc. Particularly, caffeine affected gene expression in melanin biosynthesis in C. gloeosporioides, resulting in the disturbances of melanin production and fungal pathogenicity. Manually infected tea leaves showed melanin pigment was important to appressorium development and fungal infection by histopathological observation and fungal biomass quantification. Besides, C. gloeosporioides successfully enters into the host tissue even plant could build multilayer defenses against the fungus, this might be due to the variation in pathogen targets and quantities of secondary metabolites by the host cells.Conclusions Overall, our findings indicate that caffeine in the environment can reduce the fungal growth and physiological activities. However, the genome-wide expression showed different transcriptional profiles between these fungal isolates. Thus, we believe that target of the caffeine varied among isolates and melanin may play a major role in fungus caffeine tolerance. Further in-depth research required to conclude this hypothesis.

Pinellia ternata (Thumb.) has been used for over 1000 years as a traditional Chinese herbal medicine (Ying et al. 2007) and is widely cultivated in Guizhou Province, China. It is cultivated over an...