Estimation of Aroma Determining Compounds of Kangra Valley Tea by Electronic Nose System

摘要

Aroma is a major factor for quality evaluation of finished tea. Professional tea tasters distinguish the aroma of finished tea and decide the valuation of tea. Since tea tasters' being humans their evaluations could be subjective. Instruments like spectrophotometer, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas liquid chromatography(GLC) measure the chemical/volatile compounds polyphenols, catechins and flavour profile of tea[b]. But these instruments are costly, time consuming, take long time to prepare the sample and also needs expert manpower to operate. Besides Electronic Nose (E-Nose) is also used by different tea factories to supplement the work of a tea taster for predicting the tea taster like score of finished tea. E-Nose can give tea taster like score within one and half minute and easy to operate. This paper describes the estimation of tea compounds responsible for tea aroma by E-Nose.