Comparative study on volatile compounds in Turkish green tea powder: Impact of tea clone, shading level and shooting period

The objective of this study was to determine volatile compounds in green tea powders produced from a clone of two different teas (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) grown under different shade levels and harvested in two consecutive shooting periods. Both hydrodistillation and solid phase microextraction (SPME) methods were comparatively performed to identify maximum number and amount of volatile compounds. SPME method enables the identification of the greatest number of volatile compounds which principally comprise limonene, alpha-terpineol and heptanal. A few specific volatile compounds were identified for differentiation of green tea samples depending on the treatments, such as, heptanal in 1st shooting period, ethyl benzene, xylene and benzenacetal for 2nd shooting period, and phytol and tridecane for shading treatments. The treatments were significantly clustered either as tea clones or shooting period by the volatile compounds i.e. linalool, alpha-terpineol, 3-methylbutanal, 2-methylbutanal and p-cresol, 2,6-di-tert-buthyl determined in hydrodistillation method and tridecane, heptanal, linalool, nonanal, hexanal, alpha-terpineol, 1-pentanol, pentanal, dimethylsulfide, 2,2,4-trimethylhexane, limonene and 1-hexanol in SPME method as shown by principal component analysis (PCA). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.