Tea Biology and Cultivar Authority

• International Camellia Register — “For Tea.” Maintained by the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the National Basic Science Data Center. Its advanced cultivar search and 817 admitted tea-record pages supplied names, original-script forms, registration identifiers, breeding statements, and source citations. Material records cited individually in the provenance include Mingshan Baihao 131 and Baojing Huangjincha 1. Retrieved 1 September 2026.

• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), Plant Variety Protection database. The variety database and all 85 tea-registration detail pages were used for registered denominations, Japanese forms, application and registration numbers, and dates. Retrieved 1 September 2026.

• National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Japan. The principal source was Tea Cultivar Variety Handbook, sixth edition, version 2 (茶品種ハンドブック 第6版), especially its registration and pedigree chart: handbook PDF. Retrieved 1 September 2026.

• Tea Board India. The List of Approved Planting Materials and Soil Testing Laboratories supplied the baseline inventory of approved Indian planting material. The Board's Special Purpose Tea Fund guidance supplied corroborating clone names. Baseline list retrieved 27 June 2025.

• Taiwan Tea and Beverage Research Station. Its TTES No. 18 / Hongyu record supported the identity, original name, designation, parentage, and naming year of Hongyu and kept it distinct from the Japanese cultivar Benihomare.

• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Plants of the World Online. The accepted taxon record for *Camellia taliensis* supported treating it as a species rather than a cultivar.

• Yunnan provincial agriculture authority. Its account of Yunnan large-leaf tea resources supported the distinction between sexual-line seed populations and clonal cultivars.

• Huoshan County People's Government. Its account of local tea breeding supported treating Huoshan Quntizhong as a local seed population.

The following MAFF and NARO sources supplemented the complete registration result and the NARO handbook:

• MAFF registration 22068 — Harunonagori, used to resolve the cultivar's name and lineage.

• NARO history of Miyazaki tea breeding, used with the handbook to verify Takachiho's national identifier.

• NARO experimental-station report, pp. 113–155, used for Tea Intermediate Parent No. 1 (Cha Chukanbohon 1).

• NARO Tea Research Bulletin No. 15, used for Tea Intermediate Parent No. 2 (Cha Chukanbohon 2).

• NARO cultivar records for Tea Intermediate Parent No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6, used to replace an invalid unsuffixed umbrella record with six distinct breeding-line identities.

• MAFF variety-gazette summaries for Yumenohikari, Kumamoto TC01, and Fujinoshirayuki, used for published parentage or selection history.

• NARO's Rinmei release notice, used for Rinmei's published parentage.

• Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), Methyl Anthranilate is the Cause of Cultivar-Specific Aroma in the Japanese Tea Cultivar ‘Sofu’, JARQ 38(4), 271–274: publication page. This supplied supporting identity context for Shizu-inzatsu 131.

• University of North Bengal institutional repository. An institutional Darjeeling clone table supported the Sundaram / B/5/63 identity and the separation of named clones.

• Indian Journal of Plant Genetic Resources. Its Phoobsering-312 record supported the P-312 and P312 aliases.

• Registered national tea cultivars in China. The published cultivar table supplied names, registration years, releasing institutions, and processing suitability for the original China inventory. Retrieved 27 June 2025.

These sources were used for coverage, existing names, alternate romanizations, and source-level spellings. Their entries were reconciled against higher-ranked authorities where those were available.

• TeaEpicure Cultivar Database — 589 source rows; retrieved 27 June 2025.

• TeaNursery — Japanese Tea Cultivars — 165 source rows; retrieved 27 June 2025.

• My Japanese Green Tea — Japanese Tea Cultivar List — retrieved 27 June 2025.

• Japanese Tea Sommelier — The Japanese Tea Cultivars — retrieved 27 June 2025.

These specialist catalog pages were used narrowly to preserve labels that people may encounter in tea catalogs. They were not treated as proof of formal cultivar registration, pedigree, or release year.

• Rishi Tea — Xiang Gui Yin Hao, for the exact Xiang Gui / Xiang Gui Yin Hao label.

• Yoshien — Hoshino Hakusei and Nari Tea — Premium White Leaf Sencha, for the exact Hakusei garden-selection label. Teample does not present this source-level label as a formally registered cultivar.

The International Camellia Register descriptions identify the following underlying works or source classes. Teample accessed these citations through the registry descriptions; it did not independently obtain every work in this group. A single registry record can cite more than one source, so the counts overlap.

The authority follows a source hierarchy rather than counting repeated claims as independent confirmation. A simpler attested Latin-script romanization is used as the primary display name; official denominations, alternate romanizations, original-script forms, historical breeding codes, and catalog spellings remain searchable aliases where supported. Ambiguous identifiers are recorded as ambiguous instead of being forced onto one plant identity.

The current authority contains 1,485 unique identities. Its registry-scale evidence comprises 817 admitted International Camellia Register records and 85 MAFF registrations. One ornamental record returned by the ICR tea filter was examined and excluded. The source set also includes 589 TeaEpicure rows, 279 Tea Board India rows, 165 TeaNursery rows, and the other sources named above.

We thank every institution, researcher, editor, grower, and catalog maintainer whose work is represented here. This acknowledgment does not imply that any source endorses Teample, and Teample's normalization or interpretation errors remain Teample's responsibility.