Abstract: In the case of tea beverage, the quality of tea raw materials is an important fundamental that determines final product quality. Currently, screening of tea raw materials for tea beverage is usually achieved by quality evaluation after processing them into beverage. The evaluation of tea raw materials is a complicated process involving tea infusion making, sterilization and sensory evaluation before and after sterilization and during storage. This process is time consuming and laborious when used for large-scale sample screening. In this study, we aimed to establish a rapid and efficient approach for screening tea raw materials for tea beverage based on C&R decision tree. We examined the dynamic changes in the sensory color score, brightness, color difference (?a, b and ?a/b) and turbidity of tea infusion at different processing stages of tea beverage. When screening was performed using this method, the range of tea raw materials was reduced by 29.0% (from 62 to 44), increasing the screening efficiency by 40.7% (from 0.226 to 0.318). Moreover, we proposed ?a/b > 0.475 as a major selection criterion for screening of tea raw materials for tea beverage. The approach presented in this study can provide a theoretical basis for establishing a rapid screening method for tea raw materials for tea beverage.

Key words: tea beverage, tea raw material, chroma, C&R decision tree, screenning