HPLC and high-throughput sequencing revealed higher tea-leaves quality, soil fertility and microbial community diversity in ancient tea plantations:Compared with modern tea plantations

Background: Ancient tea plantations with an age over 100 years still reserved at Mengku Town in Lincang Region of Yunan Province, China. However, the characteristic of soil chemicophysical properties and microbial ecosystem in the ancient tea plantations and their impact on tea-leaves chemical components remained unclear. Tea-leaves chemical components including amino acids, phenolic compounds and purine alkaloids, and soil chemicophysical properties including pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), soil organic matter (SOM), soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), total potassium (TK), alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen (AN), available phosphorous (AP) and available potassium (AK), and microbial community structure of modern and ancient tea plantations in five geographic sites (i.e. Bingdao, Baqishan, Banuo, Dongguo and Jiulong) were determined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and high-throughput sequencing, respectively. Results: Tea-leaves chemical components, soil chemicophysical properties and microbial community structures including bacterial and fungal community abundance and diversity evaluated by Chao 1 and Shannon varied with geographic location and tea plantation type. The ancient tea plantations possessed significantly ( P <0.05) higher free amino acids, gallic acid, caffeine and epigallocatechin (EGC) in tea-leaves, as well as soil fertility. The bacterial community structure kept stable, while fungal community abundance and diversity significantly ( P <0.05) increased in ancient tea plantation because of higher soil fertility and lower pH. The long-term plantation in natural cultivation way significantly ( P <0.05) improved the abundances of Nitrospirota, Methylomirabilota, Ascomycota and Mortierellomycota phyla. Conclusions: Due to the natural cultivation way, the ancient tea plantations still maintained relatively higher soil fertility and complete soil microbial ecosystem, which contributed to the sustainable development with higher quality in tea-leaves.