BIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF SPECIALTY TEA EXTRACTS FROM MULTISTAGE EXTRACTIONS USING SOLVENTS TREATMENTS

Diversification and value addition in tea has received considerable attention in recent past. This has been occasioned by increased tea volumes in the world market, especially the aerated product that has led to over flooding. Additionally, health benefits associated with diversified products such as green tea and extracts has elicited a lot of interests in both the industry and external players in finding out alternative ways of tea consumption. The aim of this study was to determine biochemical composition of the various tea extract products generated at different points of a multistage extraction process. The extraction process consisted of hot distilled water, methylene chloride and ethyl acetate steps. The products of purple, yellow, green, black orthodox teas, matcha and the semi aerated oolong were used as raw materials for the extracts. Total polyphenols content, individual catechins and caffeine content were assayed using UV-spectrophotometer and High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Photo diode array HPLC-PDA. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for statistical purposes to detect significant differences between the extraction methods with the least significant difference (LSD) used to separate the means in the assayed tea samples. Results generated indicated that total polyphenols, individual catechins and caffeine content were significantly different (p≤0.05) in the assayed tea samples. Water extracts showed high total yield (82.2%), while methylene chloride recorded the least (2.63%). Ethyl acetate tea extracts showed high phenolic content that ranged from 11. 4% to78.1%. Ethyl acetate extract was rich in total catechins content (46.6% to 75.9%). Water extracts had significantly (p≤0.05) high amounts of total catechins (12.3% to 27.6%) compared to residual extracts (5.4% to 8.9%) contrary to methylene chloride extracts which had low total catechin contents (1.2% to 4.5%). Caffeine was predominant in methylene chloride tea extracts and ranged from 29.97% to 58.99% pointing to high solvent affinity. Based on this results, ethyl acetate proved to be the ideal solvent for obtaining extract rich in polyphenols, and methylene chloride for isolation of natural caffeine. For high yield of all polyphenols, water was found to be the solvent of choice of tea extracts without regarding the specific class of compound to be isolated. This study confirmed that specialty tea extracts are a promising source of bioactive compounds, suggesting they could be very attractive for use as dietary supplements, cosmetic ingredients and in food industries.