Aroma is one major concern of tea flavor and represents an essential criterion for quality evaluation. Herein, we presented a novel approach for rapid, non-destructive and real-time fingerprinting of green tea aromas using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) without prior sample treatment. Positive photoionization with acetone as dopant was selected as suitable source for tea volatiles analysis in comparison to other sources. To demonstrate the effectiveness of presented method, chestnut-like aroma, an indicator of high-quality green teas, was distinguished from others using IMS fingerprinting. In particular, three sub-types with subtle difference in sensory evaluation, i.e., tender, pure and roasted chestnut-like aroma, were classified by IMS fingerprinting in combination with chemometrics with an overall predictive accuracy of 95.6%. Furthermore, we demonstrated a strategy of two-dimensional IMS profiling for capturing the “dynamics” of tea volatiles. To our knowledge this is the first report of tea aroma analysis using IMS-based tool, which may serve as a complement to the conventional tea sensory evaluation and is promising for process monitoring during tea manufacture.

香气是茶香的一个主要关注点，代表了质量评估的必要标准。在这里，我们提出了一种无需离子源迁移谱仪（IMS）即可进行快速，无损和实时的绿茶香气指纹识别的新颖方法，而无需事先进行样品处理。与其他来源相比，选择了以丙酮为掺杂剂的正光电离作为合适的茶挥发物分析来源。为了证明所提出方法的有效性，使用IMS指纹图谱将栗样香气（一种优质绿茶的指标）与其他香气区分开来。尤其是，通过IMS指纹图谱结合化学计量学对三种在感官评价上具有细微差异的亚型，即嫩，纯和烤栗子样香气进行了分类，总体预测准确率为95.6％。此外，我们展示了一种用于捕获茶挥发物“动力学”的二维IMS轮廓分析策略。据我们所知，这是使用基于IMS的工具进行茶香气分析的第一份报告，它可以作为对传统茶感官评估的补充，并有望在茶制造过程中进行过程监控。