Metabolomics for a Millenniums-Old Crop: Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis)

Tea cultivation and utilization dates back to antiquity. Today it is the most widely consumed beverage on earth due to its pleasant taste and several beneficial health properties attributed to specific metabolites. Metabolomics has a tremendous potential to correlate tea metabolites with taste and health properties in humans. Our review on the current application of metabolomics in the science of tea suggests that metabolomics is a promising frontier in the evaluation of tea quality, identification of functional genes responsible for key metabolites, investigation of their metabolic regulation, and pathway analysis in the tea plant. Furthermore, the challenges, possible solutions, and the prospects of metabolomics in tea science are reviewed.