Geographical Tracing of the West Lake Longjing Tea Based on the Stable Isotope Ratios

The West Lake Longjing tea is a famous specialty with long history in Zhengjiang province and its price is higher than any other flatten-shaped tea. However, traders tend to sell counterfeit West Lake Longjing tea in the market to acquire higher economic values. Otherwise, plants from different geographical locations have distinct isotope ratio, which form the element fingerprints due to the variation of climate and soil properties. Thus, it is necessary to do the geographical tracing of the West Lake Longjing tea based on the stable isotope ratios. In this study, we collected the flatten-shaped tea samples from the Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Lishui of Zhejiang, Qingchuan of Sichuan, Liping of Guizhou and Rizhao of Shandong where the flatten-shaped tea were widely produced. And the stable isotope ratios (C, H, O, N, Cd, Pb, Sr ) in the flatten-shaped tea samples were also assayed. Differences of the stable isotope ratios in the flatten-shaped tea from different producing areas were obtained by the variance analys