Unilever working on resilient tea bushes via genomic selection
Unilever teamed up with a genetics research firm to look into ways of improving tea crops using genomic selection. The owner of Lipton, PG Tips and Brooke Bond tea brands recently launched a pilot project in Kenya that should pave the way for more resilient tea bushes. In the first stage, the project hopes to capture and sequence the broad genetic diversity of the tea bush, otherwise known as camelia sinensis. The second objective is to create a more desirable crop by integrating traits like drought and pest resistance, as well as high yield from individual tea strains. Unilever is the world's leading tea manufacturer and buys on average around 12 percent of global supply, mostly from Kenya and other African countries.