Journal of Tea Science Research, 2024, Vol.14, No.3, 169-181 http://hortherbpublisher.com/index.php/jtsr 171 medicine and modern drug development. The presence of terpenoids in tea highlights the multifaceted benefits of this beverage, extending beyond flavor to include significant health-promoting properties. Secondary metabolites in tea exhibit rich diversity and uniqueness, playing crucial roles in the flavor, health benefits, and disease resistance of tea. These secondary metabolites primarily include phenolic compounds such as catechins, theanine, and caffeine, alkaloids, and terpenoids. Their concentrations vary significantly among different tea varieties and cultivation conditions (Figure 1). By understanding the biosynthesis and roles of these secondary metabolites—phenolic compounds, alkaloids, and terpenoids—in tea, researchers can further explore their potential applications in health and medicine, as well as their contributions to the unique characteristics of tea. Figure 1 Metabolites that showed significant changes in concentration in pairwise comparisons of tea accessions (Adopted from Yu et al., 2020) Figure 1 illustrates the differences in metabolite characteristics among five tea plant populations. Figures 1a and 1b show the number of detected metabolic features in negative ion mode (NEG) and positive ion mode (POS), respectively, with red and blue bars indicating increases and decreases in metabolite feature concentrations. The heatmap in Figure 1c displays the abundance patterns of metabolites that showed significant changes in at least one tea plant population, with higher levels of various flavonoids and theobromine accumulating in population 1. Figures 1d to 1f present box plots of the relative abundances of epicatechin gallate (ECG), theanine, and caffeine in different tea plant populations, respectively. The results indicate that the levels of these metabolites are significantly higher in population 1 compared to the other populations, particularly ECG and caffeine, suggesting
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