Abstract: Tea, one of the most popular beverages in the world, is loosing its genetic diversity due to mass vegetative propagation. Genetic improvement of tea is urgently necessary to combat biotic and a biotic stress. Molecular markers [Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP), Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) and Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR)] studies have been done mainly for genetic diversity analysis. There are attempts to study marker trait association and construct genetic linkage maps. Efficiency and cost effectiveness of Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), future perspectives for development of core collections from germplasm and association mapping for genetic improvement has been discussed.