MEASUREMENT OF IMPORTANT COMPONENTS OF TWO TYPES OF TEA SEEDS IN IRAN

Tea (Camellia sinensis) is one of the three major non-alcoholic beverages in the world. Tea is a perennial evergreen shrub which produces seeds. However, as tea is a cross-pollinated crop, normally propagation of tea is via cutting and often tea seed is considered useless especially as planting material. Tea seeds are known to have importantcomponents e.g. protein, various types of unsaturated fatty acids and saponins (Ravichandran and Dhandapani,1992). Due to the presence of high quality cooking oil from tea seed, several studies have been devoted on thecomposition of tea seed oil (Wickramasinghe, 1972). Tea oil consists of high quality cooking oil, like olive oil, and it stores well at room temperature. Tea oil is a good raw material for industrial use and is used for manufacturingsoap, margarine, hair oil, lubricants, paint, in the syntheses of other high-molecular weight compounds, and inrustproof oil. Tea saponin is a glycoside compound, and therefore is excellent natural nonionic active surfactants.It can be widely used in pesticides, detergents and in many other products (Kohata et al., 2004; Tomita, 2000). To date there are 35 thousands hectares cultivated with tea in Iran which can contribute some 6500 tons of tea oil per year. In places where such crop is available, the oil can be utilized for cooking especially as it has high nutritivevalue. In addition the waste from the extraction process namely the tea seed cake contains valuable products likesaponin and protein. This study looked into the chemical compounds of two tea varieties namely the China hybridand the local clone Iran 100. The China hybrid is currently the most widely available material in Iran while the cloneIran 100, is the new local elite clone suitable for black tea production. Clone Iran 100 has been reported to have higher yields and productivity than other clones (Azadi and Fatemi, 2009). Information about the tea seed components in clone Iran 100 relative to the existing variety would be an added advantage to the tea industry in Iran