Tagged: genetic diversity
TV1 to TV31: The Clones That Built Modern Assam
Almost no Assam garden grows tea from seed anymore. Since 1949, Tocklai's breeding station has released a numbered line of clones, TV1 to TV31, and they now cover most of the valley. Here is what a clone is, why the industry switched, and what got lost along the way.
The Third Way to Plant an Assam Tea Bush
Not every Assam bush is a clone or a seedling. A third category, the biclonal seed variety, crosses two proven clones on purpose and plants the resulting seed. Here is how it works and why Tocklai still makes it.
The Wild Tea Still Standing in Assam's Forests
Camellia assamica grows wild today in forest tracts along the Assam-Arunachal-Nagaland border, no garden, no planting record. Here is where it stands, who keeps finding it, and why even a genuine wild tree cannot fully settle the question of what "wild" means here.
Clones and Cultivars
Every named plant in an Assam garden carries a code, TV1, TS 397, TTRI 2, or a garden's own name and a number. The complete reference to what those codes mean, the categories Tocklai sorts its releases into, and how a candidate plant becomes a released clone at all.