Metabolic Changes of Amino Acids and Flavonoids in Tea Plants in Response to Inorganic Phosphate Limitation.

The qualities of tea () are not clearly understood in terms of integrated leading molecular regulatory network mechanisms behind inorganic phosphate (Pi) limitation. Thus, the present work aims to elucidate transcription factor-dependent responses of quality-related metabolites and the expression of genes to phosphate (P) starvation. The tea plant organs were subjected to metabolomics analysis by GC×GC-TOF/MS and UPLC-Q-TOF/MS along with transcription factors and 13 metabolic genes by qRT-PCR.