Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Aug 2;23(8):1931.
doi: 10.3390/molecules23081931.

Bioactive Compound Fingerprint Analysis of Aged Raw Pu'er Tea and Young Ripened Pu'er Tea

Vasilisa Pedan  1 , Sascha Rohn  2 , Mirjam Holinger  3 , Tilo Hühn  4 , Irene Chetschik  5
Affiliations

Bioactive Compound Fingerprint Analysis of Aged Raw Pu'er Tea and Young Ripened Pu'er Tea

Vasilisa Pedan et al. Molecules. .

Abstract

Pu'er tea produced from Camellia sinensis var. assamica is a widely appreciated and consumed beverage that can be divided into two kinds of tea depending on the different fermentation processed used, the special sensory characteristics, and their chemical composition. However, authentication seems to be very important for such teas, as they are traded to comparatively high prices, especially in Europe. The results for selected biochemical markers showed that aged raw pu'er tea contained 210.2 mg GAE/g polyphenols, of which 2.2 mg/g were gallic acid, 16.1 mg/g theogallin, 35.1 mg/g (-)-epigallocatechin gallate, and 40.1 mg/g (-)-epicatechin gallate, on average. Young ripened pu'er tea contained about 104.6 mg GAE/g polyphenols, of which 5.5 mg/g gallic acid, 0.9 mg/g theogallin, 0.7 mg/g (-)-epigallocatechin gallate, and 1.8 mg/g (-)-epicatechin gallate, on average. An additional objective of the present study was to unravel the best brewing conditions for optimal extraction of the bioactive compounds. Infusions of nineteen commercial teas (from pu'er cakes) were obtained at different time-temperature ratios for studying the content of bioactive compounds (flavan-3-ols, flavonols, caffeoylquinic acids, methylxanthines). Brewing at 90 °C for 5 min was the best condition to obtain a high content of total polyphenols in ripened pu'er tea. Principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis showed, that young ripened and aged raw pu'er tea can be successfully differentiated by the analyzed chemical compounds. Principal component analysis results indicated that young ripened pu'er tea has higher contents of gallic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol than aged raw pu'er tea.

Keywords: LC-MS analysis; Pu’er tea; brewing condition; hierarchical cluster analysis; polyphenols; principal component analysis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatterplot analysis of all analyzed biochemical compounds. Blue spots: phenolic content analyzed in young ripened pu’er tea (YPT), red spots: phenolic content analyzed in aged raw pu’er tea (APT).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Biplot of the first two principal components of PCA. Number 1–12 refer to scores of YPT samples and 13–19 to scores of APT samples. Red arrows illustrate direction of each analyzed compound on the first two principal components.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Heat map of hierarchical clustering dendrogram of twenty-one biochemical compounds profiles from pu’er samples obtained by LC/MS. The analyzed samples are characterized both by their biochemical compounds and pu’er tea processing.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Hung P.-Y. Tea Production, Land Use Politics, and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling over Dilemmas in China’s Southwest Frontier. Palgrave MacMillan; New York, NY, USA: 2016.
    1. Zhang H.M., Wang C.F., Shen S.M., Wang G.L., Liu P., Liu Z.M., Wang Y.Y., Du S.S., Liu Z.L., Deng Z.W. Antioxidant phenolic compounds from Pu-erh tea. Molecules. 2012;17:14037–14045. doi: 10.3390/molecules171214037. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Qiong S., Xishuang Y. History of Pu’er Tea and comparative study for the effect of its various extracts on lipid-lowering diet. Pak. J. Pharm. Sci. 2014;27:1015–1022. - PubMed
    1. Lu C.-H., Hwang L.S. Polyphenol contents of Pu-Erh teas and their abilities to inhibit cholesterol biosynthesis in Hep G2 cell line. Food Chem. 2008;111:67–71. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2008.03.043. - DOI
    1. Kuo K.-L., Weng M.-S., Chiang C.-T., Tsai Y.-J., Lin-Shiau S.-Y., Lin J.-K. Comparative Studies on the Hypolipidemic and Growth Suppressive Effects of Oolong, Black, Pu-erh, and Green Tea Leaves in Rats. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2005;53:480–489. doi: 10.1021/jf049375k. - DOI - PubMed
  NODES
INTERN 1
twitter 2