Abstract: Extreme environments, such as heat and drought, seriously affect the growth and development of tea plants and the quality of tea production. Hormones are important signaling factors, but the molecular mechanisms of hormones involved in the response of tea plants to heat and drought stresses are rarely reported. In this study, we systematically analyzed the changes in endogenous hormone contents and the expression levels of related genes in leaves of tea plants under heat and drought stresses. The results show that the contents of IAA and GA₃ were significantly reduced and the contents of ZR were slightly increased in leaves of tea plants under heat and drought stresses, which were presumably used to delay the growth of tea plants to adapt to the environment stresses. Meanwhile, many genes related to biosynthesis and signal response of IAA, GA₃ and ZR were significantly differentially expressed, which provided a molecular basis for explaining the hormone content changes and signal transduction. In addition, the contents of ABA and JA increased significantly under both heat and drought stresses, which may depend on the up-regulated expressions of ABA biosynthetic pathway genes such as ZEP, NCED, SDR and JA biosynthetic pathway genes such as LOX, OPR, ACX. Furthermore, many ABA signal responsive genes such as PYR/PYL, PP2C and JA signal responsive genes such as JAZ, MYC2 were also significantly differentially expressed, suggesting the important role of ABA and JA signaling pathways in the response of tea plants to heat and drought stresses. These results provided theoretical references for further exploring the molecular mechanisms of tea plants response to heat and drought stresses, which rely on endogenous hormones.

Key words: tea plant, endogenous hormone, ABA, JA, gene expression analysis, abiotic stress