Relationship between multi-element composition in tea leaves and in provenance soils for geographical traceability

- Tea leaves and soils from different regions had their own elemental profiles.
- The elements in tea closely correlated with provenance soil were selected.
- Na, Mg, Ca, Ni, Rb, Sr and Pb were good tracers for tea authenticity.
- A robust discriminant model of tea according to geographical origin was built.

The objective of this study was to select the elements in tea leaves correlated with provenance soils, and further build a robust discriminant model of tea according to the geographical origin. Fresh tea leaves along with corresponding topsoil and subsoil samples were collected from three different tea producing regions in China. The concentrations of 20 elements were determined in tea leaf and soil samples. Analysis of variance, Pearson correlation analysis and linear discriminant analysis were used to analyze the obtained data. The results indicated that elemental fingerprinting profiles were different for tea leaves and provenance soils from different regions. The accumulation of some elements in tea leaves was closely correlated with their concentrations in soils. And this study revealed that Na, Mg, Ca, Ni, Rb, Sr and Pb were good descriptors to build discriminant models related to geology for tracing tea.