Green preparation, safety control and intelligent processing of high-quality tea extract

Abstract

Tea contains a variety of bioactive components, including catechins, amino acids, tea pigments, caffeine and tea polysaccharides, which exhibit multiple biological activities. These functional components in tea provide a variety of unique flavors, such as bitterness, astringency, sourness, sweetness and umami, which meet the demand of people for natural plant drinks with health benefits and pleasant flavor. Meanwhile, the traditional process of tea plantation, manufacturing and circulation are often accompanied by the safety problems of pesticide residue, heavy metal, organic solvents and other exogenous risks. High-quality tea extract refers to the special tea extract obtained by enriching the specific components of tea. Through green and efficient extraction technologies, diversed high-quality tea extracts such as high-fragrance and high-amino acid tea extracts, low-caffeine and high-catechin tea extracts, high-bioavailability and high-theaflavin tea extracts, high-antioxidant and high-tea polysaccharide tea extracts, high-umami-taste and low-bitter and astringent taste tea extracts are produced. Furthermore, rapid detection, green control and intelligent processing are applied to monitor the quality of tea in real-time, which guarantee the stability and safety of high-quality tea extracts with enhanced efficiency. These emerging technologies will realize the functionalization and specialization of high-quality tea extracts, and promote the sustainable development of tea industry.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Main high-quality tea extracts and their preparation methods were introduced.

• Potential pollutants in the processing of tea extracts and their detection methods were proposed.

• Emerging intelligent processing technologies of tea extract were summarized.

• The applications of high-quality tea extracts in food industry were explored.

• Future trends of tea extracts and relevant suggestions were presented.

Keywords:

• High-quality tea extract
• tea functional components
• green preparation
• safety control
• intelligent processing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for financially sponsored by National Key R&D Program of China [2022YFD2101104], National Natural Science Foundation of China [32172223], China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [BX20220201, 2021M702140], Shanghai Postdoctoral Excellence Program [2021224], Program of Shanghai Academic/Technology Research Leader [20XD1433500] and Shanghai Agricultural Leading Talent Program.