Quantitative Analysis of Carotenoids in Tea Leaves

Introduction

In collaboration with the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Shimadzu Corporation has been developing a simple, quick and accurate method of analyzing functional components in agricultural and food products. This report introduces a quantitative method for carotenoids analysis in tea leaves and presents the results obtained in two kinds of them. Carotenoids are classified as aliphatic hydrocarbons containing 40 carbon atoms. So far, more than 700 types of carotenoids have been identified in nature. For examples, lycopene presents in tomatoes and lutein in spinach. Because all these compounds have antioxidant properties (in common with polyphenols), carotenoids draw attention as promising functional components in human diet. In this report, the carotenoids shown in Table 1 were analyzed.

March 31, 2021 GMT