Research bolsters Southern African tea production

Ceamellia sinensis, the biological name for the plant that produces black and green tea, is grown in some 50 countries and is the world's most widely drunk beverage after water. As Southern African tea production is growing at about 20 percent per year; the region's tea production could challenge India's for first place by 2020.

Malebe - a doctoral student at the University of Pretoria - is studying the drought-survival mechanisms of tea plants under stress - and has identified a DNA marker for those plants more able to withstand drought. In effect, Malebe has found a shortcut that suggests that a particular tea plant will tolerate drought conditions, without having to wait to see if and how the plant grows. "This can be used to identify suitable drought-tolerant cultivars to benefit the commercial tea industry," she told Allafrica.com.

Malebe's research is supported by the Regional Initiative in Science and Education (RISE), a charitable foundation funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York that aims to build capacity for science research-and-teaching in African universities. RISE works through a series of thematic networks, including the Southern African Biochemistry and Informatics for Natural Products Network (Sabina). Malebe's work has included finding a feasible way to send tea leaves to research labs.

"Developing countries lack skills for the isolation of genetic material," she says. "What is needed is a simple leaf-drying method so that the tea leaves can be transported to laboratories where genetic material can be extracted and usable genomic DNA can be isolated and stored."

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For more information, go to www.sabina-africa.org.