TEA (CAMELLIA SINENSIS) WHILE PRESERVING THE NATURALLY FORMED COMPOUNDS AND AROMA

Description

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the green tea processing more particularly green tea processing with frozen technology, preserving naturally formed compounds and aroma.

Background to the invention

Tea is one of most popular beverages in the World and demand for good tea is growing steadily. Since when tea has been invented as a beverage, common tea type of teas like black teas, green teas, Oolong teas, Pauchong teas, White teas, Brick teas, yellow teas and few more rare teas have been consumed. Almost all the above types of teas are processed and dried essentially for maintain the keeping quality. Pickle tea is the one of the exceptions and it is consumed as an eating food rather a drink in Myanmar. Therefore, all the teas those are consumed as a drink must be subjected to drying process at higher temperatures above 100 C.

Advantages of the new technology for consumption of non-fermented tea

Application of very high temperatures in tea dryers cause evaporation of many valuable flavour compounds naturally presence in the fresh green leaf and formed during withering. Most of naturally formed human health supportive compounds disappear along with many other important living organisms such as enzymes. Many such natural and favourable chemical compounds directly attribute the overall quality of made tea and unfortunately there is no mechanism found yet to preserve those valuable compounds during drying process due to the application of hot air with higher temperatures above 95C in order to maintain the final moisture of fired/dried tea around The most important healthy compounds in green tea leaf such as, tea catechins Epi Gallo Catachen Gallate (EGCG),EGC,EC and ECG can be optimized and well preserved for achieving higher flavours and healthy compounds together in the final cup brewed from the proposed technology.

There are so many research studies done to study the effect of green tea on human health and results have significantly concluded that green has great control of many serious health problems. The following is one of them.

Green tea catechins (GTCs) proved to be effective in inhibiting cancer growth in several experimental models. Recent studies showed that 30% of men with high-grade prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (HG-PIN) would develop prostate cancer (CaP) within 1 year after repeated biopsy. This prompted us to do a proof-of-principle clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy of GTCs for the chemoprevention of CaP in HG-PIN volunteers. The purity and content of GTCs preparations were assessed by high-performance liquid chromatography [(-)-epigallocathechin, 5.5%; (-)-epicatechin, 12.24%; (-)-epigallocatechin-3 -gallate, 51.88%; (-)-epicatechin-3-gallate, 6.12%; total GTCs, 75.7%; caffeine, <1%] Sixty volunteers with HG-PIN, who were made aware of the study details, agreed to sign an informed consent form and were enrolled in this double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Daily treatment consisted of three GTCs capsules, 200 mg each (total 600 mg/d). After 1 year, only one tumor was diagnosed among the 30 GTCs-treated men (incidence, approximately 3%), whereas nine cancers were found among the 30 placebo-treated men (incidence, 30%). Total prostate -specific antigen did not change significantly between the two arms, but GTCs-treated men showed values constantly lower with respect to placebo-treated ones. International Prostate Symptom Score and quality of life scores of GTCs-treated men with coexistent benign prostate hyperplasia improved, reaching statistical significance in the case of International Prostate Symptom Scores. No significant side effects or adverse effects were documented. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that GTCs are safe and very effective for treating premalignant lesions before CaP develops. As a secondary observation, administration of GTCs also reduced lower urinary tract symptoms, suggesting that these compounds might also be of help for treating the symptoms of benign prostate hyperplasia. (Cancer Res. 2006 Jan 15;66(2): 1234-40.Betuzzi S ¹ , Brausi Tvi Rizzi F. Castagnetti G. Peracchia G. Corti A.)

However, if the levels of EGCG and the other 3 major catachins found in the fresh green leaf can not be achieved in the dried green tea. The polyphenols in various parts of the tea plant used in manufacture of tea products (young leaves, old leaves, and stem) were analyzed by HPLC. The young leaves (apical bud and the two youngest leaves) were found to be richer

(2.7-fold) in polyphenols than old leaves (from the tenth to the fifth leaf). Also, the tea polyphenols were found to be higher (1.4-fold) in summer than in spring. Ten different types of commercial tea (manufactured tea), including unfermented, semifermented, and fermented tea, were analyzed for their polyphenol compounds, and it was found that both yields of solids in tea water extracts (TWEs) and the amount of

(-)-epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG) in these products varied with different tea leaves and processing methods. Longjing tea (unfermented green tea) contained the highest concentration of EGCG and polyphenols, whereas Assam black tea (most fermented) contained the least. Longjing TWEs showed strong inhibitory effect on DNA synthesis in A-431 tumor cells. We also found that green tea polyphenols (GTPs) and EGCG strongly inhibited tumor cell DNA synthesis and peroxyl -radical generation. The evidence suggests that the strong antioxidative and antiproliferative activities of Longjing TWEs and GTPs are mainly due to the higher contents of tea polyphenols. EGCG (the major component of GTPs) showed strong inhibitory action on the growth of immortalized cells (NIH3T3) and tumor cells (S-180II) but almost no effect on the growth of normal cells (C3H10T1/2). (Composition of Polyphenols in Fresh Tea

Leaves and Associations of Their Oxygen-Radical -Absorbing Capacity with Antiproliferative Actions in Fibroblast Cells.

Yu-Li Lin. I-Ming Juan. Ying-Ling Chen. Yu-Chih Liang.

Jen-Kun Lin)

The proposed new technology can prevent all destruction of favourable compounds and the most important tea catachens presence in green leaf from the drying of blanched dhools(broken tea particles)or whole leaf. Blanching eliminate PPO and arresting fermentation(enzymic Oxidations) reactions so that tea catachins are well preserved from fermentation. In addition, in the new technology, freezing prevents further destructions of all tea catechins and other favourable compounds presence in blanched dhools. The tea processed using the proposed technology preserve all valuable and favourable compounds while ends up with excellent cup of tea that was not known to tea world before. This can be tea that must had been enjoyed by Chinese emperors when tea was not introduced to other part of the World.

The other advantageous of this new technology is to improve the brewing capabilities of frozen dhools against the same amount of green teas after drying. Higher temperatures above 60C allows better extraction easily and frozen dhool that is brewed in hot water..

The risk of having food safety issue of IQF or frozen dhool is very low as the main pathogenic bacteria that could grown under lower temperatures such as Listeria monocytogenes cannot be survived in blanching temperatures and follow up freezing process maintained below -20C. Brief Description about the invention

The processing steps are as follows

1) Harvesting of tender green tea leaf

2) Collection and transport

3) Withering

4) Washing

5) Spinning

6) Blanching

7) Maceration

8) Freezing

9) Packing and transportation

Detailed description about the invention

1) Harvesting of tender green tea leaf

It is very important to harvest only immature tender green tea leaf for this process. The selection of correct standards of green leaf is extremely important for achieving brighter tea liquor(Effect of some controllable parameters on optimization of characters in CTC type teas , A.S. Ranaweera, R.O. Thattil, B.F.A. Basnayake, Tropical Agri. Research Yol 6,1994) Harvest has to be done very carefully to prevent pre -mature fermentation. Therefore, it is not only the selection of leaf but also harvesting technique that controls the quality of the proposed finished product

2) Collection and transport

Proper and rapid collection of tea leaf is also important and harvested tea leaf has to be therefore stored properly in a pre-designed leaf store/rack allowing proper ventilation. Leaf has to be transported along with the leaf racks to the processing unit.

3) Withering

This is an optional steps in this process and few hours of withering would help to improve the colour of final tea liquor in non fermented teas. 4) Washing

Typically, the green tea leaf or withered leaf is not washed in the tea processing as it is then difficult to remove additional moisture easily and it is costly too. In addition, as the fresh or the withered leaf is blanched by steam at higher temperatures the final products is safe from microbial contaminations and is good for direct human consumption. However, some pollutant cannot be easily eliminated from the final product only by drying and follow up shifting process when the leaf is not washed. Since the newly introducing product is recommended for washing as it should be directly consumed without any pollutant or any other pathogens.

5) Spinning

This operation is just to remove additional water that would influence freezing process negatively. However, this is an optional process and carry out if the leaf is washed only. 6) Blanching.

Blanching of tea leaf has two fold contributions. One is to arrest fermentation by destroying Polyphenol Oxidase (POO) in the leaf epidermal layer. The preservation of tea catechins can be optimized by preventing enzymic oxidation. This is the main objective of this blanching process. As a result, a product with high level of natural polyphenols can be introduced to the tea.

The other aspect is to sterilize the product preventing any microbial growth afterwards specially Listeria monocytogenesthat is survive in low temperature conditions. This pathogens can not survive in high temperatures but the final product can be consumed as smoothers or milk shake where high temperatures are not applied and therefore eliminations of pathogens by blanching/sterilizing are very crucial.

7) Maceration Withered or non withered green tea leaf has be

macerated(milled) after or before blanching in order to present the new product more presentable, consumable and transportable manner. This maceration improves the solubility of the final product very significantly.

) Packing and transportation

Packing of this new product must be done in an

atmosphere of- 18C or below and it has to be in a form that supports easy usability at the consumer level. The final product must be kept below -18C throughout the process until it is delivered at the consumer end. This avoid any possible further fermentation and any growth of pathogens.

Benefits to the industry

1) This new product Green Fresh Camelia will have great health influence due to it’s non-destructive preparation without using any heat during the drying process

2) This product Can be used directly for brewing a fresh cup of tea with or without the form of tea bags/pouch and it will give the real taste of fresh tea just produce in a tea processing unit/factory

3) This product can also be used for making ready to Drink teas(RTD) with extremely high quality and favourable sensory attributers. Smoothers and milk shake are the other potential products to use this products for health benefits.

4) There is no necessity of using any standard tea grading

machinery to make this new product ) Most importantly there is no waste material formed or generated by this new processing technique for disposal as refuse tea. Total green leaf intake will be consumed to make the new product resulting zero by-product

generation. ) All the natural flavours in green leaf and formed during withering(optional) will remains fully in this new product as a result tea will be one of the most popular natural dinks in the World.