Abstract: Spring tea, summer tea and autumn tea of organic chashan Malus hapehensis were used as the materials to spectrophotometrically determine its major bioactive components. In stimulated gastric juice condition, the nitrite scavenging rate of tea at various concentrations were determined to analyze the correlation between major bioactive components and nitrite scavenging rate. Results showed that chashan Malus hapehensis contained 0.51%－1.5% polyphenol, 5.10%－12.20% rubusoside and 2.34%－4.67% phloridzin. Three kinds of tea infusions can remove nitrite efficiently. When tea-to-water ratio was lower than 1:50, the scavenging capability of tea infusion on nitrite was increased with increasing tea concentration. Nitrite scavenging rate of three different tea infusions revealed a significant difference (P ＜ 0.05) and the summer tea exhibited the best scavenging capability, followed by spring tea and autumn tea. The scavenging capability was positively correlated with the contents of rubusoside and phloridzin. However, no obvious correlation between scavenging capability and the content of polyphenol was observed. The nitrite scavenging reaction was fully completed in 20 min. Meanwhile, the scavenging capability of summer tea was significantly higher than that of spring tea and summer tea during the same time period.

Key words: Chashan Malus hapehensis, bioactive component, nitrate, experiment in vitro