Evaluation and Authentication of Red Fruits Teas by High Performance Thin-Layer Chromatographic Fingerprinting

Next to water, tea is one of the most consumed beverages all around the world and fruit teas provide a dietary source of biologically active compounds. Many functional foodstuff of fruit origin, including red fruit tea, have entered the markets providing new developments in the domain of quality control and food security scientific research. For this reason, the goal of our study was to establish a method for authentication of 12 commercially available fruit teas (raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, rose hip, wild berry) using HPTLC fingerprinting. The HPTLC fingerprints of red fruit and tea extracts obtained in visible light and in fluorescence at 366 nm after the derivatization with Natural Product/Polyethylene glycol (NP/PEG) reagents indicated different characteristic colored zones allowing a clear differentiation between all teas, in terms of their type and producer. Also, a good correlation between the data from chromatograms and type of teas and the producers, respectively, was obtained.