Study on the origin identification of Anji Baicha based on mineral elements

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Science
• Analytical Chemistry
• Food Science

Background:

• Geographical Indication (GI) protection is vital for premium agri-products like Anji Baicha tea.
• Combating fraud in high-value markets necessitates robust authentication methods for GI products.
• Elemental fingerprinting offers a promising approach for tracing the geographical origin of food products.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a scientifically verifiable traceability system for authenticating the geographical origin of Anji Baicha tea.
• To integrate elemental profiling with chemometrics for accurate GI product authentication.
• To develop a framework for protecting the integrity of premium agri-products against fraudulent claims.

Main Methods:

• Elemental fingerprinting of 365 tea samples using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES).
• Chemometric analysis employing Support Vector Machine (SVM) for classification and Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) for identifying key discriminators.
• Establishing soil-tea correlations to understand biogeochemical transfer mechanisms.

Main Results:

• The SVM model achieved high accuracy (94.9% training, 92.7% test) in classifying tea origin.
• Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) identified Molybdenum (Mo), Copper (Cu), and Rubidium (Rb) as key elemental discriminators.
• Robust soil-tea correlations (R² > 0.5) were established for Rb, Manganese (Mn), Lead (Pb), Magnesium (Mg), and Potassium (K), supporting biogeochemical transfer.

Conclusions:

• The integrated mineral profiling strategy provides a scientifically verifiable framework for authenticating Anji Baicha tea's geographical origin.
• This approach effectively combats fraud in premium tea markets by ensuring GI integrity.
• The developed traceability system has immediate applicability for protecting the GI status of Anji Baicha and other high-value agri-products.