Fig. 3. Timeline of research on tea plant genetics and genomics.

The solid black circles indicate past events in tea plant genomics, including Phase I of tea plant morphology and Phase II of tea plant transcriptome and genome studies. Events are highlighted with colored rectangular boxes: yellow (transcriptome sequencing), orange (genome sequencing), cyan (database development), and gray (gene cloning). The solid white circles represent Phase III of tea plant comparative genomics and population genetics studies in the future.