How Scientists Are Making Late-Spring Tea Tastier Again! 🍵
Do you enjoy a warm cup of tea? 🌿 Many people around the world love tea, especially the sweet and calming flavor it has in early spring. But did you know that tea picked in late spring doesn’t taste as good? Scientists have been puzzled by this for years.
Tea gets much of its unique taste from something called theanine. Theanine is an amino acid (a building block of proteins) that gives tea its sweet flavor and helps you feel relaxed. In early spring, tea plants have lots of theanine in their new shoots. But as the weather warms up, theanine levels drop, and the tea doesn’t taste as good.
A team of scientists led by Professor Zhang Zhaoliang from Anhui Agricultural University in the Chinese mainland wanted to find out why this happens. They studied tea plants over a long time and discovered something amazing!
They found out that during spring, tea plants use theanine to help new shoots grow. Theanine gets moved inside the plant cells by a transporter called CsTHS1. It takes theanine to the mitochondria (that’s like the “powerhouse” of the cell where energy is made).
Once there, an enzyme called CsGGT2 breaks down the theanine. As it gets warmer, the plant makes more CsTHS1 and CsGGT2, so more theanine gets used up, and there’s less left to give the tea its sweet taste!
Understanding this process is super important! Now, scientists can think of ways to keep the theanine levels high even in late spring. They might use special fertilizers, use shading techniques to keep the plants cooler, or even use gene editing to help the plants keep more theanine.
This means we could enjoy tasty, sweet tea all through spring! Isn’t science cool? 🌟
Reference(s):
Scientists unlock secret to preserving freshness in late-spring tea
cgtn.com
