Raw material grade-associated differences in Ancha tea infusion quality revealed by sensory-instrumental evaluation, metabolomics and integrative multivariate analysis.

Authors

Yida Wu, Ziming Guan, Shengmei Xie, Xiao Liang, Haozhe Duan, Jixin Zhang, Fangling Zheng, Tiehan Li, Jingming Ning

Published in

Food research international (Ottawa, Ont.). Volume 245. Issue Pt 5. Pages 120963. Dec 01, 2026. Epub Oct 06, 2026.

Abstract

Raw material grade is associated with the quality of processed tea, yet how multicomponent metabolic variation relates to taste and infusion color differences among Te Gong (TG), Gong Jian (GJ) and Mao Jian (MJ) Ancha teas remains unclear. This study combined sensory evaluation, instrumental taste and color measurements, and targeted and untargeted metabolomics with exploratory multivariate integration to characterize these relationships. TG received the highest sensory taste and infusion color scores, whereas MJ showed a higher electronic tongue sweetness response despite its lower sensory taste score. Chemical profiling revealed a gallated catechin- and caffeine-rich profile in TG, higher epicatechin and epigallocatechin contents in MJ, and relatively high gallocatechin gallate and gallic acid contents in GJ, indicating distinct compositional patterns rather than a uniform grade-dependent concentration gradient. Exploratory weighted correlation network analysis identified 114 grade-associated metabolites, dominated by phenylpropanoids and polyketides, particularly flavonoids; detected free amino acids were enriched toward TG, whereas d-glucose and sucrose were enriched toward MJ. Block partial least squares integration linked the TG-associated quality responses with gallated catechins, caffeine and taste-related amino acids, and the MJ-associated sweetness response with sugars, while revealing overlapping but non-identical metabolite associations with taste and infusion color. Together, these findings provide an association-based chemical framework for interpreting Ancha tea grade differentiation, extending quality characterization from individual constituents and attributes to multicomponent metabolic patterns linked to multidimensional infusion quality.

PMID:
42977427
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Nov 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.