Ying-Jun Zhang, Chang Liu, Da-Fang Gao, Li-Fang Zhu, Qing Liu, Hong-Tao Zhu, Dong Wang, Chong-Ren Yang

Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650201

Tea is one of the most popular beverages consumed in the world due to its rich content of polyphenols, which were reported to have various bioactivities, such as antioxidative, antimicrobial, antitumor, antimutagenesis, etc.

According to Min's system, there are 12 species and 6 varieties in genus Camellia sect. Thea (Theaceae), in which the commonly cultivated tea plants, Camellia sinensis L. and C. sinensis var. assamica (Masters) Kitamura, are included. All these species are distributed in China, and Yunnan has most of the Thea plant species. Even though the commercial tea is normally produced from the two cultivated tea plants, C. sinensis and C. sinensis var. assamica, the leaves of most of the wild tea plants are often used to make tea and consumed by the local people of its growing area in China.

As part of our systematic studies on tea and its orginal plants, the green teas produced from several wild tea plants, C. taliensis, C. crassicolumna var. crassicolumna, and C. pachyandra were studied. Their bioactivities were evaluated by DPPH radical scavenging, tyrosinase inhibition, and antiviral assays. Hydrolysable tannins and flavan-3-ol gallates showed the potential bioactivities. Moreover, the contents of main chemical compositions in different tea plants were compared by HPLC analysis, and the chemical study on ripe Pu-er tea, a special post-fermented tea by microbe is described.