Salicylic acid (SA) is a phenolic phytohormone widely believed to regulate plant growth and stress response. Despite its significance, the genetic basis of SA-mediated resistance to biotic stressors in tea plants is little understood. Our study investigated the genetic diversity, population structure, and linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns of 299 tea accessions using 79 560 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) obtained from genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) data. Our genome-wide association study identified