Quality control of comercial samples of white, green and red tea marketed in Bahía Blanca city

SOTO, T; DE PALMA, N; VEROLO, M; PÉREZ CUADRA, V

Córdoba

Congreso; 3° Reunión Internacional de Ciencias Farmaceúticas (RICiFa); 2014

A great amount of teas are commercialized around the world, but only young leaves and stems of Camelliasinensis are used to manufacturing tea sensu stricto, which is the favorite infusion for many people aroundthe world. The aim of this study was to analyze commercial samples of white, green and red tea sells in BahiaBlanca city, determining its quality in direct relation to the amount of trichomes presented in these samples.One commercial sample of white tea, three of red one and four of green tea, corresponding to five trademarkswere analyzed. From each package of 20-25 teabags, were analyzed four randomly chosen. The materialwas dissociated and drained subsamples of 0.1 g were mounted and studied under light microscopy followinga greek guard design. All samples correspond to Camellia sinensis, although most of them are contaminatedwith tissues of other plants and animal species. The only studied brand of white tea showed about 300 hairsper subsample. For green tea, three brands had near 200 trichomes per subsample while in the remainingmore than 700 were counted. A brand of red tea averaged 100 hairs per subsample, another one 350 andtwo had highest values, reaching to 1100 trichomes. The quality of raw material with which this type of massmarketteas are produced is notoriously uneven, which contrasts with their high prices due to the currentpopularity of the antioxidant properties that they own.