Identification of the Origin of White Tea Based on Mineral Element Content

In recent years, the white tea industry has emerged. However, white tea market prices mainly based on the place of origin face certain challenges, such as shoddy and false advertising. To study origin identification technology, 64 white tea samples were collected from their main origins (Fuding City, Zhenghe County, and Jianyang City) and analyzed for 26 mineral elements (P, K, Fe, Ca, Mg, Al, Mn, and others) using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Results showed that white tea samples from different origins had different mineral contents, and samples collected from Zhenghe contained higher amounts of 10 mineral elements than samples from Fuding and Jianyang. By linear discriminant analysis (LDA), support vector machines (SVM) analysis, and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) methods, the majority of tea samples from different origins could be successfully differentiated according to their mineral elements. The accuracy of origin-based identification using mineral element analyses reached 98.44, 95.31, and 100 %, respectively. Therefore, mineral elements can be used to identify the origin of white tea samples, providing a reference for white tea identification.