Theogallin-to-Gallic-Acid Ratio as a Potential Biomarker of Pu-Erh Teas

There are two types of Pu-erh tea available on the world market: Raw and Ripe. It is not difficult to tell them apart if the Raw version is relatively young. Researchers have already developed various tools to identify Pu-erh teas. However, they are quite complicated and require advanced statistical analyses. In addition, they are characterized by different levels of accuracy. The aim of the work was to identify relationships or differences that would easily give specific results for identifying types of Pu-erh tea. The content of selected methylxanthines was determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) on an Agilent 1200 chromatograph with a UV-VIS diode array detector. The total analysis time was 28 min. A combination of liquid chromatography and a triple quadrupole mass spectrophotometer was used to identify gallic acid and theogallin in the analyzed samples. A multivariate cluster analysis was used to compare the results for single samples, and its results were presented in horizontal hierarchical tree plots. The quantitative determination showed that theophylline is present only in Ripe Pu-erh teas. In addition, it was shown that the ratio of theogallin to gallic acid can be an effective tool to verify the authenticity of Pu-erh varieties.