CHANGE OF BIOACTIVE CONTENT IN SEED PROPAGATED TEA PLANTS AT DIFFERENT SHOOTING PERIODS

Tea production is vital for east Black Sea region for farmers because it is a dominant agricultural product. The majority of tea gardens in the region were multiplicated by farmers using seeds in the last 50 years resulted a great variation for most of the plant characteristics. The present study describes variation in shooting periods on the bioactive content of seed propagated tea plant. Results indicated significant differences among most of the searched parameters among shooting periods. Total phenolic content was the highest at the first shooting period (between 6.45–7.03 g gallic acid equivalent/100 g) dry weight (DW) basis. Among the catechin, Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) was found to be dominant in black tea samples (0.756–0.941 g/100 g DW) and followed by epigallocatechin (0.590–0.752 g/100 g DW) and epicatechine gallate (0.510–0.654 g/100 g DW), respectively. In general, first shooting period (May) gave the highest catechin content that improved tea quality and with following shooting periods catechin content decreased steadily. Total phenolic content was found between 6.45–7.03 g GAE/100 g DW among shooting periods. The results suggested that first shooting period of black tea samples had higher bioactive content.