Abstract:

Camellia japonica‘Jinhua Meinü’，a bud mutation cultivar，is selected from C. japonica ‘Nuccio’s Bella Rossa’. As a new cultivar for appreciating both flowers and leaves，the characteristic of them are that they own red leaves during the growth period. For researching the colour-change mechanism of the new cultivar，we choose the leaves of‘Jinhua Meinü’for plant materials and 7 physiological indexes related the leaves color，which are the content of chlorophyll，carotenoid，total anthocyanin，cyanidin 3-O-glucoside，total polyphenols，catechins，epicatechins. The results show：（1）The quantity of chlorophyll a and b is approximate in the same stage，So chlorophyll can’t cause the leaves difference of the 2 cultivars；（2）Although the content of carotenoid in red leaf cultivar is high than the green cultivar，according to the chemical property of carotenoid，the interference of it can be preliminarily excluded；（3）In the 4 leaf stages，the average content of total polyphenols，catechins and epicatechins account for only 33.1%，42% and 15% of‘Nuccio’s Bella Rossa’，so we can speculate the biosynthetic pathway of polyphenols is suffocated at some level；（4）The average content of total anthocyanins is 3.06 mg · g^-1，which is 7 times of‘Nuccio’s Bella Rossa’. Accordingly，we think the accumulation of anthocyanins incarnadine the leaves of‘Jinhua Meinü’，and the changes of biosynthetic pathway of anthocyanins and polyphenols can be the reason.

Key words: Camellia japonica, bud mutation, red leaf, anthocyanin, polyphenol, biosynthetic pathway of flavonoid