Recent advances of tea (Camellia sinensis) biotechnology

Tea is one of the most important non-alcoholic beverage drinks worldwide and gaining further popularity as an important 'health drink'. It is served as morning drink for 2/3rd of world population daily. Although conventional breeding and propagation contributed significantly for last several decades for varietal improvement, due to the limitations of conventional breeding coupled with the demand for increasing productivity with lower cost of production, application of biotechnology becomes an alternative approach. Therefore, apart from a dozen of tea research institutes globally, several other groups are working on tea and related genera that have registered many valuable information with several achievements. The present review deals with progress in-depth of various aspects of biotechnological works such as micropropagation and alternative approaches, cell and organ culture techniques, genetic transformation, DNA markers as well as organelle genome and gene cloned from tea and related genera which will be valuable information for the workers working on various aspects of Camellia biotechnology.