This paper aims to provide a stable instrumental method for provenance discrimination of Anji-White tea by its distinctive taste.180 authentic and 60 copyright white tea samples were collected for specific geographical origins detection; all of them were measured by electronic tongue coupled with 7 independent sensors.Therefore, chemometrics methods, principal component analysis (PCA), and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA) COFFEEBERRY were performed in classification.The PCA distribution shows that, in provenance analysis, PCA is a simple and reliable tool for small sample sets, but for sets with large objects, PCA seems powerless in classification.
Therefore, PLSDA was applied to develop a classification model.The prediction sensitivity and specificity of PLSDA, respectively, reached 0.917 Mountaineering - Homme - Vetements - Pantalon and 0.950.
This study demonstrates the potential of combining electronic tongue system and chemometrics as an effective tool for specific geographical origins detection in Anji-White tea.