ABSTRACT
Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze is a perennial leafy crop. All varieties of tea are produced from the tea plants. Tea plants prefer a warm and humid climate with plenty of rainfall and also like diffused light and weak acidic and well-drained soil. The well-grown tea plants provide high-quality tea shoots, which vary with tea cultivars and the environmental conditions, such as the type of soil and altitude and climate of the tea plant growing area. A Chinese idiom says, “A higher mountain yields higher quality tea,” which indicates that the mountain conditions are optimum to tea plant growth, especially the growth of high-quality ush.1 Moreover, tea quality is also determined by the processing techniques employed. For instance, the same fresh tea leaves can be processed to black tea, oolong tea, and green tea by fermentation, semifermentation, and nonfermentation, respectively. Those basic three types of tea have different quality characteristics, including color, aroma, taste, and appearance.
