Characterization of the key aromatic constituents in tea flowers of elite Chinese tea cultivars

Abstract

The volatiles in flowers of twenty-three elite tea cultivars were obtained by simultaneous distillation extraction, from which seventy-nine aromatic constituents were identified using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectromety. The major detected constituents found were acetophenone, linalool, I-hexanol, 2-pentanol, methyl salicylate, 4-methyl-2- hexanone, alpha-methyl-benzene methanol, cis-linaloloxide, acetic acid, Z-3-Hexen-7-01, S-2-heptanol, and hexanal. Both acetophenone and linalool were determined from every cultivar, and each volatile accounted for more than 20 % of the total. Several of the cultivars analysed contained some special constituents which were not detected from other cultivars.