The taste of tea: How soil and microbes affect the drink's flavour
WHILE tea probably does not come with the same connoisseur or savant cachet as coffee, for drinkers there’s still “nothing like a nice cuppa,” as the saying goes.

Brewing that nice cuppa is usually not too hard, at least compared to some of the more ornate coffees available, so tea aficionados are perhaps more grounded and rooted than those who speak coffee jargon.

Quite literally so, as it turns out, since tea plant roots are key to flavour and quality, according to new research into root microbes in China, the world’s biggest tea-grower nation.

What appears to happen, the researchers found, is that microbes in tea roots play a part in the “uptake of ammonia,” which then influences the production of theanine, an amino acid which, they said, “is key for determining a tea’s taste.”

“Significant disparities in microbial communities, particularly nitrogen metabolism-related microorganisms, were identified in the roots of tea plants with varying qualities through microbiomics,” said Tongda Xu of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.

“Crucially, through the isolation and assembly of a synthetic microbial community from high-quality tea plant roots, we managed to notably enhance the amino acid content in various tea plant varieties, resulting in an improvement in tea quality,” Tongda explained.

The team, whose research was published in the journal Current Biology, said the findings could be applied to other crops such as rice, as they suggest that synthetic compounds can be added to soils to improve flavours. – dpa
Researchers said the findings could be applied to other crops such as rice, as they suggest that synthetic compounds can be added to soils to improve flavours.