Discriminating geographical origins of green tea based on amino acid, polyphenol, and caffeine content through high-performance liquid chromatography: Taking Lu’an guapian tea as an example

Abstract

Seventy-three Lu'an guapian tea (LAGP) samples were collected from 11 growing locations in the city of Lu'an, Anhui Province, China. Through high-performance liquid chromatography, 18 amino acids, along with gallic acid, caffeine, and five catechins, were quantitatively detected. Hierarchical cluster, correlation and principal component analysis, and a support vector machine were used for geographical discrimination. The findings suggested that the differences in tea quality between the inner and outer mountain regions are related to isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, and valine contents, with a correlation coefficient of more than 0.85. Principal component analysis combining with support vector machine was a feasible method. The identification rates for the inner and outer mountains were 97.96% in the training set and 95.83% in the prediction set. Furthermore, the identification rates for the three counties were 91.84% and 95.83% in the training and prediction sets, respectively.