Research Information System
International Plant Breeding Congress, Antalya, Turkey, 10 - 14 November 2013, pp.643
POSSIBLE ADDITIVE HARVEST PRODUCTS FROM EASTERN BLACK SEA TEA
(Camelia sinensis L.) PLANTATIONS
Yrd. Doç. Dr. Yusuf ŞAVŞATLI* Prof. Dr. Fatih SEYİS*
*Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi, Ziraat ve Doğa Bilimleri Fakültesi,
Pazar-Rize, TÜRKIYE
Tea (Camelia sinensis L.) is an important plant species mostly grown for its leaves all over the world. One of the leading tea producer countries is China; followed by India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. Turkey ranks at the 8th place with a plantation area of 75.890 ha and the at the 5th place with production of 221.600 tonnes (Anon., 2013a). Tea is grown, wholely in Eastern Black Sea, with 65,6 % by Rize, with 20,46 % by Trabzon, 11,3 % by Artvin and with 2,62 % by Giresun and Ordu (Anon., 2012a). The tea plantations in Turkey are established by planting seeds. This signalizes a large genetic variation. This variation takes away the homogenity in tea production regarding quality negatively on one hand and creates an important resource regarding the development of new varieties on the other hand.
In Turkey, tea production consists of Chinese tea (Camellia sinensis) crossings. The same can be explained for other countries and species like C. oleifera, C. chekiangoleosa, C. reticulata, C. grijsii, C. vietnamensis, C. crapnelliana and C. gauchowensis are cultivated due to the quality of edible oil in its seeds (Anon., 2013b). The oil content in tea seeds rises up 63,3 % in the species C. chekiangoleosa (Jia et al., 2010; Shu, 2007). In tea the highest obtained oil content is about 34 %. Nowadays high quality edible oil and biodiessel can be obtained from the tea plant, originally cultivated for its fresh leaves, and this gives the possibility to selects superior genotypes displaying high oil yield (Demirbaş, 2010).