CHANGES IN THE QUALITY PARAMETERS OF CLONAL BLACK TEA DUE TO FERMENTATION TIME

Flavour index and Group II volatile flavour compounds of clonal black tea progressively decreased while Group I compounds increased during f ermentation process. However, theaflavins in made black tea and taster s' evaluation of such tea changed in a quadratic manner with fermentat ion time. The rate of production of the individual theaflavins varied within a clone and between different clones as fermentation progressed . The results explain the errors obtained when only one quality parame ter is used to estimate optimum fermentation time in black tea manufac ture.