CHARACTERIZATION OF THE KEY AROMATIC CONSTITUENTS IN TEA FLOWERS OF ELITE CHINESE TEA CULTIVARS

Baoyu Han; Peng Zhou; Lin Cui; Jianyu Fu

doi:10.20425/ijts.v6i1.4678

Baoyu Han Key Laboratory of Tea Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Agriculture, P. R.. China, Tea Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, P. R.. China
Peng Zhou Key Laboratory of Tea Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Agriculture, P. R.. China, Tea Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, P. R.. China
Lin Cui Key Laboratory of Tea Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Agriculture, P. R.. China, Tea Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, P. R.. China
Jianyu Fu Key Laboratory of Tea Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Agriculture, P. R.. China, Tea Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, P. R.. China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20425/ijts.v6i1.4678

Keywords: Elite tea plant cultivar; tea flowers; volatiles; aroma constituents

Abstract

The volatiles in flowers of twenty-three elite tea cultivars were obtained by simultaneous distillation extraction, from which seventy-nine aromatic constituents were identified using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The major detected constituents found were acetophenone, linalool, 1-hexanol, 2-pentanol, methyl salicylate, 4-methyl-2-hexanone, alpha-methyl-benzene methanol, cis-linaloloxide, acetic acid, Z-3-Hexen-1-ol, S-2-heptanol, and hexanal. Both acetophenone and linalool were determined from every cultivar, and each volatile accounted for more than 20 % of the total. Several of the cultivars analysed contained some special constituents which were not detected from other cultivars.