Breeding tea plants to be seedless.
This week we welcomed Dr Zhang (UGA) and Dr Bi (MSU) and three students to the farm to work on some tea plant breeding. This is where farming and science come together to help create strains of plants with new capabilities. Do tea plants need to have a seed? In the wild, yes tea plants would need a seed in order to reproduce. At a tea farm we can certainly make use of tea seeds but once you have all the tea plants you need, you really do not need the seeds. Tea plants can also be reproduced by cuttings as well. For the tea plant to live out its years as a successful producer of harvestable tea leaves it actually...