Influence of certain chemicals on nitrate reductase activity and its correlation with caffeine in tea [(Camellia sinensis (L) O.Kuntze)] leaves.
2010
Pandey, Renu
Any factor which influences the chemical composition of leaf also has a great bearing on quality of made tea. The experiment was conducted to investigate the effect ofcertain chemicals on nitrate reductase (NR) activity and to find its correlation with the chemical constituents of leaf. A Tockali released clone TV18 was sprayed with chemicals, viz., jibika (mixture of GAJ+4+7)' lAA, cycocel, thiourea, methanol, succinic acid and sucrose including water spray as control. Sucrose application increased NR activity amongst all other chemical treatments in phase I (45.2 %) and phase II (42.1 %). However, the total nitrogen (N) (7.21 %) and crude protein (6.39 %) were higher with succinic acid in phase I and thiourea in phase II. Further, methanol application resulted in 19.4 % and 16.0 % increase in caffeine content in phase I and phase II, respectively. Similarly, proline was also maximum in both the phases (32.5 %, 23.9 %) with methanol while total chlorophyll content was higher with jibika (37.1 %) in phase I and with methanol (74.6 %) in phase II. In this study, an interesting relationship between NR activity with caffeine 0.69**) and proline (r = 0.89**) content was observed. This study suggested that alteration in NR activity due to growth regulating chemicals had a direct influence on caffeine content of tea leaves which is one of the quality determinants of made tea.
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