Pretreatment and posttreatment in the biolistic transformation of tea plant (Camellia sinensis) somatic embryos

Advancements in plant transformation: from traditional methods to cutting-edge techniques and emerging model species

The ability to efficiently genetically modify plant species is crucial, driving the need for innovative technologies in plant biotechnology. Existing plant genetic transformation systems include Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, biolistics, protoplast-based methods, and nanoparticle techniques. Despite these diverse methods, many species exhibit resistance to transformation, limiting the applicability of most published methods to specific species or genotypes. Tissue culture remains a significant barrier for most species, although other barriers exist. These include the infection and regeneration stages in Agrobacterium, cell death and genomic instability in biolistics, the creation and regeneration of protoplasts for protoplast-based methods, and the difficulty of achieving stable transformation with nanoparticles. To develop species-independent transformation methods, it is essential to address these transformation bottlenecks. This review examines recent advancements in plant biotechnology, highlighting both new and existing techniques that have improved the success rates of plant transformations. Additionally, several newly emerged plant model systems that have benefited from these technological advancements are also discussed.

Understanding the Origin and Evolution of Tea (Camellia sinensis [L.]): Genomic Advances in Tea

Tea, which is processed by the tender shoots or leaves of tea plant (Camellia sinensis), is one of the most popular nonalcoholic beverages in the world and has numerous health benefits for humans. Along with new progress in biotechnologies, the refined chromosome-scale reference tea genomes have been achieved, which facilitates great promise for the understanding of fundamental genomic architecture and evolution of the tea plants. Here, we summarize recent achievements in genome sequencing in tea plants and review the new progress in origin and evolution of tea plants by population sequencing analysis. Understanding the genomic characterization of tea plants is import to improve tea quality and accelerate breeding in tea plants.