Improving the tea withering process using ethylene or UV-C

Withering is an important stage of tea manufacturing that has changed little from traditional methods. UV-C and ethylene were identified as supplementary treatments that might enhance tea quality during the withering of shoots. We assembled a de novo tea transcriptome and employed differential gene expression and metabolic pathway enrichement analyses to elucidate the mechanisms of both physical and chemical withering of tea shoots subjected to these two postharvest treatments.