We recently expanded the number of Tetraploid tea plants on the tea farm but it took some perseverance to get here. We have a section of tetraploid plants that never got planted because we ran out of plants 8 years ago.
We lost 6 years to that process.
2 years ago, we did our first batch of large scale cuttings ourselves and it was successful. We are putting them out this year and filling in a major gap in our field.
Moral of this story….Tea is a lifetime endeavor-- we don't think in seasons, we think in decades.
What is a Tetraploid Tea Plant?
These are unique plants. They carry 4 strands of DNA (hence tetraploid) instead of the standard 2.They can be used to breed seedless tea plant varieties and have a different plant phenotypic expression from most tea plants-- thicker leaves, more abundant flowering, bigger buds, etc.
How many Tetraploid plants do we have on the Mississippi tea farm?
Approximately 4500.
What teas do we make from these plants?
Because these are a large leaf tea plant we use the lead from this plant to make our Mississippi Queen Green tea and Mississippi Belle Oolong.
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