Identification of Tea Cultivar by Amolified DNA Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) using Black Teas as Sample

Identification of tea cultivar was examined by amplified DNA fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) using black tea as a sample. The black teas used in this study were individually processed from 7 tea cultivars (Karabeni, Benifuki, Izumi, Z-I, Hatsumomiji, Benihikari, Benihomare). In addition, commercially used 7 Darjeeling teas, 3 Assam teas, 3 Kenya teas, and 3 Java teas as black tea on the market and 31 Japanese green tea cultivars were also used for comparison examination. AFLP comparison analysis indicated that it was possible to identify the tea cultivar by AFLP using the black tea as a sample. Moreover, a specific cultivar, Benifuki was detected in black tea materials by the analysis of AFLP comparison. It was suggested that 358.8 bp fragment amplified by PCR with the primer pairs of EcoR I-ACA/Mse I-CTG and EcoR I-ACT/Mse I-CTC is a target DNA marker of Benifuki cultivar. AFLP will be used as a powerful tool to assess the descrimination of the processed-materials.