Author Archives: Rebecca Boehm

Drs. Orians and Stepp featured on Climatecentral.org

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Drs. Orians and Stepp of the Tea and Climate Change project were recently featured in an article on climatecentral.org. The article, entitled, “Climate Change Poses a Brewing Problem for Tea” discusses how climate change is a affecting tea production and quality in China. Many experts on tea production are also quoted in the article.

You can read the full article here. Also, the original Climate Central article has been re-posted by Green Bizz and Quartz, and referenced in an article featured on Grist.

Dr. Orians talks tea at Salem State’s 2015 Darwin Festival

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On February 13, 2015 Dr. Colin Orians, PI of our project, gave a seminar entitled “From Farm to Table: how climate change is altering the food we consume” at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts.

The seminar was a part of the school’s annual week-long Darwin Festival, which celebrates the work and legacy of Charles Darwin. You learn more about the Darwin Festival here.

Recent findings on seasonal variation of comprehensive volatile metabolite profiles in teas

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Recently, our team published a manuscript in the Journal of Chromatography summarizing the effects extreme weather events have on tea plant physiology. Comprehensive volatile metabolite libraries were produced for teas harvested before and after the East Asian Monsoon in SW China using automated sequential, multidimensional gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-GC/MS). Using this technology, we were able to identify a total of 201 spring and 196 monsoon metabolites, with 169 common and 59 seasonally unique compounds. Spectral deconvolution of GC/MS data using the metabolite libraries showed marked seasonal differences. Striking concentration differences were observed within families in as little as 5-days after the monsoon onset, with individual metabolites increasing, decreasing or remaining the same between the seasons. The analytical methods developed in this paper will be used to profile metabolites in tea over time with respect to harvest season and climate.
Questions? Please contact the corresponding author on this manuscript, Dr. Albert Robbat, Jr. (albert.robbat@tufts.edu)