ABSTRACT: Tea plant (Camellia sinensis) leaf is an important non-alcoholic beverage resource. The application of quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) has a profound significance for the gene expression studies of tea plant, especially when applied to tea leaf development and metabolism. In this study, nine candidate reference genes (i.e., CsACT7, CsEF-1α, CseIF-4α, CsGAPDH, CsPP2A, CsSAND, CsTBP, CsTIP41, and CsTUB) of C. sinensis were cloned. The quantitative expression data of these genes were investigated in five tea leaf developmental stages (i.e., 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and older leaves) and normal growth tea leaves subjected to five hormonal stimuli (i.e., ABA, GA, IAA, MeJA, and SA), and gene expression stability was calculated using three common statistical algorithms, nam
