Effects of Three Different Withering Treatments on the Aroma of White Tea

• Published in: Foods Vol. 11; no. 16; p. 2502
• Main Authors: Wu, Huiting, Chen, Yuyu, Feng, Wanzhen, Shen, Shanshan, Wei, Yuming, Jia, Huiyan, Wang, Yujie, Deng, Weiwei, Ning, Jingming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Aroma compounds; aroma extract dilution analysis; Dilution; Dimethyl sulfide; Evaporation; Experiments; Fermented food; Flavor compounds; Flavors; Food science; Gas chromatography; Headspace; Hexanal; Ionone; Laboratories; Linalool; Mass spectrometry; Mass spectroscopy; Methods; Myrcene; Nutritional aspects; odor activity value; Odorants; Production methods; Solid phase methods; Solid phases; Tea; Volatile compounds; White tea; Withering; withering treatment; China; Fujian China; United States > US
• ISSN: 2304-8158; 2304-8158
• DOI: 10.3390/foods11162502

White tea (WT) is a slightly fermented tea, and withering is a critical step in its processing. The withering treatment can affect white tea’s aroma; different treatments’ effects were investigated in this study. White tea was withered indoors (IWT), in a withering-tank (WWT), or under sunlight (SWT). Quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) results showed that SWT had a more obvious flower aroma, and WWT had a more pronounced grassy aroma. Volatile compounds were extracted and subsequently detected with solvent-assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE) and headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) combined in addition to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). A total of 202 volatile compounds were detected; 35 of these aroma-active compounds met flavor dilution (FD) factor ≥ 4 or odor activity value (OAV) ≥ 1. The nine key potent odorants for which both conditions were met were dimethyl sulfide, 2-methyl-butanal, 1-penten-3-one, hexanal, (Z)-4-heptenal, β-Myrcene, linalool, geraniol, and trans-β-ionone. These results were used with QDA to reveal that SWT had a stronger floral aroma mainly due to an increase of geraniol and linalool. Moreover, WWT had a stronger grassy aroma mainly due to increased hexanal. The results could be used to select processing methods for producing white tea with a superior aroma.